


Maple and Pine

by cabbageboy



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Body Dysphoria, Chronic Pain, Dorks in Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gay, Gay Panic, Gender Dysphoria, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Transphobia, Love, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Adora (She-Ra), Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Violence, References to Depression, Romance, Self-Worth Issues, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, Sweet, Trans Bow (She-Ra), Trans Catra (She-Ra), Transphobia, True Love, background glimbow - Freeform, mentions blood and injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28432239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabbageboy/pseuds/cabbageboy
Summary: Adora just wants to stock shelves, put things in customers cars, and maybe make enough extra cash to get her through college.Imagine her surprise when she shows up to her new job in the lumber department of a Home Depot and sees a ghost from her past.She has a chance to get something back, something she lost a long time ago.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 233
Kudos: 294





	1. Tattooed Behind My Eyelids; Stamped Into My Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really excited about this story and I have been working on it for a while! Updates will probably be once a week (maybe more often if I finish chapters early, maybe less often since I am going back to work)
> 
> ***The implied/referenced self-harm that I tagged for is unsafe binding, which can/does lead to pain and injury. I just wanted to make sure I warned for what that tag was referencing specifically.
> 
> ***Smut in chapter 6

“We’re going to put you down for the lumber department, then. It’s where we definitely need the most people. The first week is all online training for product knowledge and customer service, so you can do the various lift training after you’ve been on the floor for a while. Now, I understand you have limited availability?” The manager, Brian, said. He was probably in his 40’s, deep dimples in his cheeks from his wide grin. There’s a twinkle in his soft brown eyes that she isn’t sure how he could possibly have retained this far into life when she is half his age and hers flickered out years ago. His tight curls bounced as he looked down at her application and then back up at her encouragingly.

His energy must rub off on her a little bit and Adora nods, a bright smile masking her nerves at the thought of not only having to operate heavy machinery but also give advice to customers on projects that could cost them thousands of dollars. She was really banking on her strength and cheery outward appearance to help her thrive in this new job, especially with how hard she pretended to care about customer service. She knew from the trips she had taken to this very store that, while she sure didn’t care much about lumber, as long as she could lift heavy with a smile she was golden. The guy said himself that they would do a week of product training, and if there was one thing she could do it was memorize and regurgitate facts. You don’t become valedictorian if you’ve got a bad memory.

“I gave my schedule to HR for the remainder of the soccer season, which lasts until late November, but my availability opens up significantly after that. I still have class and team training but it is way more flexible and individual than it is at the height of the season. I am happy to work around it where I can to better serve the department’s needs, and then it won’t be a concern again until next Fall,” She replies, voice steady.

They shake on it, his warm hand engulfing hers. Her 5’ 8” wasn’t short, but the manager had to be at least 6’ 4” and his massive hand dwarfed her own. With a few parting words she agrees to come in for her first day of training on Friday, 3 days from now. Her shoulders visibly relax as she exits the conference room and makes her way through the warehouse. Pulling her hood up over her head and buttoning her denim jacket tighter, she wishes the cashiers a good day as she walks out of the exit, in much better spirits than when she walked in. As long as she left that day with a job she was happy, and honestly relieved. 

The bus ride home was long, rush hour traffic slowing it significantly. The Home Depot was just on the edge of the city limits, and unfortunately that meant that to get home she had to take the bus Northwest through the center of campus and then transfer to the line that ran due East to her apartment, in a giant frustrating triangle. No one lived in the industrial district just outside of town, so even though it would make her life a lot easier, there wasn’t a bus that ran the perimeter of the city. She stared out the window at the angular, gunmetal skyscrapers looming overhead. Dotting the sidewalks were expertly pruned trees, changing leaves that whipped in the wind through the grey mist. She observed for a few minutes, getting used to the sway of the lumbering machine before pulling out her Biology textbook and a spiral notebook to get started on her homework questions. It was absolutely packed, but she managed to find standing room at the front right next to the ledge behind the driver’s seat. Having a spot to place her book was nice, but the real benefit was the fresh air that came every time the driver opened the door, a brief relief from the musky dampness of rubber boots and soaked clothing. Bending a leg and shifting her weight, bracing a shoulder against the window to balance herself, she got to work reading through the chapter, taking notes and working to absorb the material. The slightly bent over position wasn’t great for her back but she pushed that thought out of her mind to get started on her work. She would have to be even more on top of her studies now that she was taking away a lot of her free time to start working. The height of soccer season might not have been the best time to get a job. Her performance on the team and academics had to come first, but there were things her scholarships didn’t cover, things she couldn’t pretend she didn’t need anymore. 

Not when people were starting to notice. When people started to notice is when they tried to help, and she couldn’t let them waste their resources on her if she could do something as simple as getting a job.

The bus rolled to a stop outside of the biggest apartment complex in town, over half of the occupants disembarking to head home. She gathers her books and makes her way off, thanking the driver and moving to stand in the shelter of the bus stop. The mist has turned into massive droplets that hammer the plexiglass in loud torrents, an almost deafening roar battering her eardrums. While she waits for her next bus she pulls out her phone to pass the time and finds a few messages from Glimmer.

_Good luck at your interview!_

_Be safe! See you when you get home! We’ll wait up for you before we leave for dinner!_

She smiles at the thoughtful messages and types a quick reply, letting her know that she was at the transfer stop just as the bus pulls up. She has to deal with standing room again for the first couple of stops, but by the fourth traffic has started to wind down, and she manages to find two adjacent seats at the back of the bus so she can spread her things out and get back to studying. Passengers come and go in the five or so stops remaining on the way to her apartment complex, but it never fills up to the degree that the first ride did on the way into town. The buses would only get more full as the weather worsened, already unseasonably cold for mid September.

It’s nearly dark when the bus lumbers up to her stop, and she thanks the driver as she departs. The cool breeze and few raindrops that dodge her hood wash over her face and help beat back the nausea from the swaying bus ride as she walks down the sidewalk to her building. Making her way up to her floor she unlocks the door and barely makes it into the apartment before she is bombarded with questions.

“How did it go?”

“Did you get the job?”

“The weather was terrible, how was the bus ride?”

She stares back and forth at Glimmer and Bow, waiting for them to calm down so she can get to answering their questions. They’re in matching sweaters; Glimmer’s so big it swallows her and Bow’s hugging his muscular arms and shoulders.

“The interview went great and I got the job! I start training on Friday after class. The bus ride was fine, and I even got some studying done.”

They each congratulate her with a hug and set out to dinner, giving her a look and making her promise to eat before they get home. Having their date night on Tuesdays meant they could stay up as late as they wanted since neither of them had class until the afternoon on Wednesdays. Adora never looked forward to spending the evening alone, but at least the quiet would allow her to study.

Their apartment was small but cozy, a shared space just big enough for their TV, couch, an armchair, and a coffee table. There was a kitchen with so little counter space they often had to encroach on the dining table for cooking space. On the opposite side of the apartment from the entrance door was the hallway that led to their bedrooms, hers on one side and Glimbow’s (she didn’t call them that, but Bow immortalized their ship name with a plaque on the door) on the other with the bathroom at the very end of the hall between them. She smiles when she looks around at the framed photos hanging on the walls. Pictures of herself, Bow, and Glimmer as well as a few of each of their parents from birthdays, anniversaries, graduation, holidays, random movie nights, and any instance in between. She was loved, and she loved her found family, but at the same time she tried not to think too hard about how the majority of those photos had three kids, but only two sets of parents.

She wipes away the tear forming at the corner of her eye, the one that had been threatening to fall ever since she saw the date on her phone this morning.

Eleven years. It had been eleven years since her best friend was adopted, leaving the foster home, and her, forever. Eleven years ago today they had gotten home from school to find the two women that had visited a few times before, there to take her best friend home with them. Her heart tore itself in two that day. She was happy, so deliriously happy that the person she loved the most got a happy ending, got the family they had always talked about, whispered about on those nights that they were kept awake from the nightmares. Yet there was a sadness that drew her down into darkness at the thought that they would never see each other again, would never get to spend their lives together like they talked about. 

She allowed herself to dream, for a while after the adoption, that she would find the same thing. She thought if she was good enough, well behaved and got good grades that she would be adopted too. She would get out from Ms. Weaver’s home, with a family of her own and new parents that would want her, and she would go in search of her best friend again.

Dreams are just that; dreams. 

Shaking herself from her memories, their bitterness leaving her mouth slanted with a foul taste, she returns to her homework. She pours all of her focus into the remainder of the questions in her Biology chapter and then switches over to her Calculus problems. The problems scramble her brain, her least favorite subject wearing away at her emotional and intellectual energy as the quiet of her apartment sinks into her bones. While she liked Biology, she was excited for next semester when she got to take Advanced Anatomy and Physiology, and Kinesiology 325, the prerequisite for which was some stupid lower level oral communication class that she had to finish before registering for upper level classes. Every day when the bus ride home took her by the Sports Science Research Center, part of Brightmoon Hospital’s extensive research partnerships, she got more and more excited to just get her degree over with so she could work on getting her Doctorate of Physical Therapy. She had a pretty good relationship with the head of the department, and already knew that when she graduated she would be more than willing to write her letters of recommendation. She just had to get there first.

She finished her homework and, with distractions dwindling the cough deep in her chest and the ache in her back grew more pronounced until she had to take a break to lay down. She had to remind herself that she was happy. She had love, friends, a family that she had pieced together from scratch, the means to get the career that she wanted, the support she needed to do so. She just couldn’t shake that feeling, that knowledge that there was a piece of it that was missing, would always be missing. 

That feeling of loss, of grief, broke the dam holding in the rest of the feelings she didn’t feel like processing, was too busy to allow herself to lose focus and confront. She couldn’t let it distract her; the weight in her chest, the hand around her heart, the lead in her lungs, the dagger twisting in her stomach. She couldn’t let something intangible, that wasn’t even _really_ hurting her, distract her when she needed to be focused.

There would be time, just not now. She could wait.

This time of year, when the leaves turned and she could see her breath in a cloud of fog, she could close her eyes and tattooed behind her eyelids was the image of that car driving away from her, a pair of mismatched eyes looking back at her, disappearing over the hill at the end of the street.

And never coming back. 

Everyone said things wouldn’t always be this hard, but when exactly were they supposed to get easier?

***

Catra tries her hardest not to slam the door when she walks into her house, knowing that it would just wake her moms up and make them worry. Worry always leads to a discussion around the dining room table, something that she was never into and seldom ready for. The cold seeped into her and made her quake, while the ache she felt, the ache she could normally deal with, was compounded over the course of her particularly long day. Kicking her day off with a Chemistry lab, followed by a lecture in the Humanities building across campus, and ending with an 8 hour shift made Tuesdays her worst day of the week by far. 

Brightmoon University was one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, each major featuring a program curated by some of the most brilliant minds in the world. For Catra it was her dream college, the Art program in particular was headed by faculty who had done everything from freelance sculpture, working on movie sets, and curating art in museums in France. While digital media had grown on her in the past few years, to her nothing beat more traditional media. There was just something about the sound of a brush flowing over paper, the smoothness of wet clay in your palms, the raised hairs on the back of your neck when a palette knife scraped just right against canvas. Those sensations were always accompanied by the feeling that you were making something, really creating. 

The School of Business was one of the top programs in the world, with faculty from fortune 500 companies and startups alike. By the time she left she would have the tools to excel in her own work and a business portfolio to get her any job in the city. BU’s campus took up the entirety of the Southeast quadrant of their largest metropolis, Brightmoon, for which it was named. It was surrounded by firms and companies that hired most of their interns and entry level employees from the university directly. It was an opportunity she needed, the low acceptance rate meaning that she was in the upper percentile of high school graduates to have applied. 

The grandeur of the city could not outweigh the exhaustion of the commute. Upon her acceptance to the accredited institution she was met with the decision she had been dreading since she was 14 and classmates began to talk about their fantasies of what college would be like. All she felt was unparalleled dread at the idea of having to share a room, living in a dorm with so many strangers in such close proximity. She was disappointed to say the least when she learned that her options were to share a double, or live off campus. Housing was guaranteed to incoming freshmen who applied for it, but it was rare for freshmen to get a single room, and thus her decision was made. The anxiety that came with the possibility of having to share a room, and finding out later if the person she was sharing it with was safe or not, wasn’t something she was willing to mess with while she was supposed to be focusing on school work. The commute from her parents house was usually eaten up by a podcast, but when traffic was bad enough that the episode she was listening to ended before she even got into the city proper, and not only was she over an hour into her drive but the groove she was in had to restart with the intro of the next on her list, her mood worsened by the mile. Not surprisingly, with the rain, today was one of those days.

She kicked off her boots, rolling her jeans up so the soaked hem didn’t get her socks or the floor dirty, and made her way to the kitchen. It was a single family home, a ranch style that she was thankful for since it meant she didn’t have to go up stairs with her ever stiffening hip. The entry door opened to a cozy den, a plush carpet where she would play in the evenings, watching the front door for her mama while mom sat in an armchair reading. She remembered the excitement of hearing a car pull up in the driveway, a door slam, and the creak of the storm door swinging open as she scrambled to get up and run to meet her at the door once it finally opened. Her mama would drop her messenger bag, scoop her up in a hug, and they would spend the rest of the evening playing on the floor until it was time for dinner. She smiled, thinking of those early memories of the first house she had lived in that really felt like a home. Living at home in her second year of college, when all of her friends were in the city, made her feel stunted sometimes, like she was moving slower than they were. But when this place meant so much to her, and the people here loved her, the feeling she got when she walked in the door made it so much better.

She worked close to campus so she could get to her shift as soon as she finished class, but that meant that she worked far from her house. Her shift ended at 11, and with the drive home it was now much later than her moms normally went to bed. She definitely didn’t expect them to be up, and was surprised to see the kitchen light on.

Why they like being high school teachers is beyond her, when they’re both qualified to teach college and they wouldn’t need to be at work at 6:30 am.

If they hadn’t taught at _her_ high school, though, nobody would have found her that day. No one would have known where to look and, while they didn’t think it was healthy to talk about what would have happened if no one found her, she knows it would have been too late.

“Hey kid, rough day?” Netossa said leaning in the entryway. She was cool and calm most of the time, but it was obvious when she was worried. She had lived here for eleven years and the woman still tried to act cool when she was really just a big softie for her family. It’s late, and while they must have had dinner hours ago, ma sets a warm bowl of soup on the table with a grilled cheese sandwich and a steaming cup of tea, while mom places a hand on her upper back between her shoulder blades and ushers her over to the table to take a seat. She’s their kid after all, and they knew better than anyone what day it was and how she would feel, not to mention how bad Tuesdays were and how much worse it was made by the weather. 

“Leave her alone, dear. She’ll talk if she wants to. You know how college is,” Spinerella chides, kissing her wife on the cheek and taking her hand.

They both eye her with gentle smiles and she blushes, looking down and taking a spoon full of the tomato soup, feeling the warmth soothe her aching throat. Even after all this time, when she knows they love her and she loves them back, she still catches herself surprised that it hasn’t ended yet. They accepted her through everything she threw at them, all of the horrible things she said about herself when she was still discovering who she was and what that meant. They never let go, even when she wanted to let go herself. 

A weight still settles in her chest when she overhears a conversation in the library or from customers in the next aisle over, talking about her whether they know it or not. How would they react, how would they treat her if they knew that she was one of “those people?” They debated about her fundamental rights in classrooms as though people like her weren’t really people at all. Like her existence was something sensational; to be joked about and laughed at. Like her body was something for other people to control. It made her feel hopeless, like the fight she had put up to accept herself didn’t mean anything because others would always see her as someone dressing up for attention.

“Yeah Ma, rough day,” She whispers, voice raspy and losing the pitch she worked so hard to keep up for the last 14 hours. It just made her feel worse. 

_Oh we’re spiraling today are we?_

“Hey, kid,” Ma starts, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. She flinches a little at the contact, a byproduct of her day spent guarded and cautious. Netossa takes it in stride and squeezes gently, grounding her with the comforting embrace. She could tell when the flinch meant _let go_ and when it meant _please don’t let go_.

“We love you, you know that? And I’m proud of you,” She says it with such conviction, such absolution, that Catra forgets for a moment that she is 20 years old and lets herself be the 9 year old she was all of those years ago when she laid in her new bed in her new home, and her new moms took turns rubbing her back until she fell asleep on nights when she just couldn’t stop missing Adora.

Today would always be rough, though. She still had that image in the back of her mind of Adora standing at the end of Ms. Weaver’s driveway, smiling and waving at her like she was going to see her again. 

She never did. 

Everyone said things wouldn’t always be this hard, but when exactly were they supposed to get easier?


	2. My Name On Your Lips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently when I said once a week I meant literally a day and a half later. Happy New Year! For real I will probably be doing about one chapter a week, but I had this written already and its technically a holiday so here goes!

Adora isn’t sure why she likes training videos so much. Something about the ridiculous scenarios they came up with, the over the top acting, and her genuine love of power tool related safety really did something to put her in a better mood. It was familiar, and in her life’s ever changing circumstances, that was a feeling to hold on to. All four years of high school shop class when the semester started and all they did for the first week was watch power tool and shop safety videos was always her favorite. This was the same, and she let herself observe the oversized brightly colored T-shirts and the baggy cargo pants before her. The functionality of a panel saw hadn’t really changed since the 90’s so it's not surprising that they never bothered to remake these videos. She could operate it in her sleep, not that it was a good idea. Ripping vs cross cutting, measuring accurately, putting on safety goggles, turning on the dust collection; those were all things she could do with her hands tied behind her back.

_Well, not literally because I need hands for it_  
_I mean my… mental hands? My brain’s hands?_  
_It's not rocket science_

She got to experience 20 hours of it, and she appreciated the easiest week of work she would be getting through her time here. She was in a room just off the break room, with 6 computers set up on a set of desks lining the wall in a U shape. She was the only one there today, the silence of the room and the royalty free music of the videos practically lulling her to sleep. The warmth and stagnant air also didn’t really help, nor did the all nighters she pulled studying to keep up. Occasionally she would click on a video set that she was confident she could pass the final quiz for, allowing her to pull out a textbook or her notes and go over some of her more challenging coursework to get a little bit ahead while the video played. As long as she completed the training courses in the amount of days scheduled for it, she was meeting expectations. She was probably going to finish a day ahead of schedule, in fact. It would allow her first shift on the floor to be a Wednesday night, instead of the Saturday it was originally going to be, since she was off Thursdays and Fridays. Most people would take the extra day to sit at a computer but she really wasn’t interested in her first day on the floor being a Saturday, their busiest day of the week, when there would be hundreds of customers she didn’t know how to help. 

Her teammates thought she was out of her mind for taking on a job, but none of them understood. She didn’t really allow them into her personal life, even though she saw herself as a pretty outgoing person, and enjoyed their company enough. There were just parts of her that she knew they wouldn’t get, that she wanted to keep hidden as long as she could. She had lifelong friends, in the form of Glimmer and Bow, and wasn’t really seeking those new connections that a lot of people sought when they went away to college. She wasn’t opposed to more friends, but she already had her family. New people always asked questions, and you could only avoid topics like your entire childhood for so long before people found out how sad yours was and then danced around you on eggshells for the remainder of your friendship. Once in a while she went out for team meals to avoid them thinking she didn’t like them at all. Those weeks were always the hardest, spending several meals worth of money at once just to say she went out hit her anxiety and her guilt hard, but saying ‘no’ every time she was invited made the guilt eat away at her too. She couldn’t really win, either way, and it shouldn’t have been as big of a deal as it was. 

But it was a big deal for her. She grew up with nothing, and as far as she was concerned she hadn’t done anything to prove that she deserved more than nothing either. She was good enough at soccer and got good enough grades for the school to deem her worthy of their investment, but that could have been anyone. 

By her final day of training she was well and truly exhausted of the tiny room with puke green walls and a squeaky laminate floor. The ancient office chairs were murder on her sore back, never finding an angle in those 20 hours that did anything to soothe the sharp searing in her muscles. It was almost torture, listening to the conversations of all of the employees in the break room and unable to go out there to introduce herself, the managers office looming at the end of the hall within ear shot. Scrolling through the list of training videos, making sure there was a little green check mark next to each one, she sighs with relief that it was finally over. She shuts off the computer, gathers her backpack, and jogs downstairs so she can clock out and catch the bus back to campus for soccer practice. 

Just as she is punching her code into the time clock a voice behind her startles her.

“Hey, you the new lumber associate? I’m Catrina, from paint.”

“Yep that’s me! I’m A-,” She swings around to face her but stops short when she sees the person in front of her. While they had both changed a lot since they were 9 years old, Catrina had changed more. Her hair hung down around her shoulders, and Adora found herself wondering if it still streaked with gold and red in the sunlight, if it still had the same softness her fingers could practically feel. Her hand twitches just thinking about it. They had been the same height back then, but Catrina was at most 5’4,” and the protective slouch she found herself in made her look even smaller. None of that mattered, though, because those eyes she loved so much were still the same ones she sought out when she was a child. They both gasp and stand there shocked, although Catrina looks like she’s seen a ghost. Something in Adora winds tighter at the fear, never imagining that someone she still loved so much would look at her like that. It was obvious why she was apprehensive of someone from her past appearing at such an unexpected place.

“Adora?” She finally whispers. Her voice makes Adora shiver.

“Yeah, yeah it’s me,” She breathes out in response.

Another beat of silence. The uncertainty they both felt, wondering if they would ever see each other again, hung thick in the air. They’re frozen, terrified that if they move the moment will be lost and it will have just been a flicker or a dream, and the person in front of them will disappear again.

“Do you, ya know, recognize me?” Her question is cautious, expression timid and fearful. She’s shifting her weight, like she wants to be ready to have to escape.

Adora’s expression softens and her brows turn up in the middle to give Catrina that same look that she always gave her, “How could I forget? You’re my best friend.”

She can’t tell if this makes Catrina feel better or not, but she thinks she might have said the wrong thing when a tear pools at the corner of the woman’s eye as she sniffs and clears her throat.

“Right, well um. I have to get back to work. But I guess… I’ll see you around?” She says, biting her lip, voice taking a hard edge.

Adora nods, blonde ponytail, the same one she had the last time Catrina saw her, shimmering in the pale fluorescent light of the hallway.

“Yeah, Catrina, I’ll be around.”

Catrina passes her to return to her own department and all Adora can do is just stare at her, feeling trapped in a time warp, seeing her past and what she wishes more than anything was her future walking away from her.

In all of the dreams she had where they were reunited, she never imagined it would be in a dimly lit hallway in a Home Depot in her college town, as coworkers.

***

Soccer practice is brutal, the level of pain in her back was nothing compared to the distraction of reuniting in these strange circumstances with the person she thought she lost so long ago. Did it even count as a reunion yet, when they barely spoke and Catrina was clearly terrified? The ordeal made her miss goals and blocks left and right. She had more extra pushups and laps that practice than she had the entire previous year combined, the punishment for being distracted and not taking it seriously pushing her body well past exhaustion. That was an edge she had been teetering on since before practice even started, which wasn’t a new feeling to her. The concerned looks from her teammates and the disappointment from her coaches was grating away at the last remaining resolve keeping her from breaking down. While her teammates go to the locker room to change she grabs her bag and goes to the restroom in the science building across the street to change shirts and put on sweatpants over her practice shorts. The adrenaline wears off and she has to actually sit down from how hard she is coughing and how dizzy it makes her, the hunger not helping matters in the slightest.

By the time she stumbles into the apartment she is freezing from her wet jacket and the rain, shaking from the cold and her barely contained sobs. Glimmer and Bow ask her what is wrong, concerned from her face that is no doubt twisted in pain, and they stand to place comforting hands on her shoulders and guide her over to the couch where she finally collapses into shuddering sobs. 

Glimmer goes to get her a glass of water and put on the kettle for tea, while Bow sits next to her and gently removes her backpack and her wet jacket. She’s shaking violently when he wraps a blanket around her to try to warm her up.

“It's ok, bud, you’re ok. Want to tell us what happened?”

She shakes her head and reaches out for the glass of water, taking a few sips before putting it on the coffee table and covering her face in her hands. It’s too much; seeing Catrina again and seeing the fear in her eyes, her fuck ups at practice, the pain. It’s all overwhelming and all she can do is sit there and try to breathe as it all forces itself out. Glimmer and Bow sit there with her, Bow rubbing her back and Glimmer her knee, until the whistle of the kettle indicates that the water is hot. Glimmer gets up to fetch the tea and Adora, still sniffling, calms enough for her shoulders to stop shaking and her breaths to stop coming out in such shallow gasps.

“How are you feeling?” Bow's soft voice asks.

“I really don’t know where to start. It’s just… So much,” Her whisper comes out muffled by the hands still covering her face.

“So, start at the beginning. Was it work?”

“Yeah, sort of. It started fine but then, I met someone. Someone from the foster home, who got adopted, someone I love. I think I told you about her, my best friend. Her name is Catrina, and she’s… God Bow she’s beautiful. If 9 year old me knew that my best friend would grow up like that I think my brain would have melted out of my nose,” She chuckles a little, making Bow laugh along. She had told them stories of her childhood in the foster home and her best friend, the one who left a hole in her heart, the one who had to leave.

“That doesn’t sound so bad though. I mean, I’m sure she was shocked to see you. Did she seem… upset?” He asks, trying to prompt her for details, to figure out what from today set her off.

“Yeah but… The reason is really personal. She didn’t seem too upset, just apprehensive. I guess me showing up to her workplace all of a sudden shocked her. She said she’d see me around though. I just think… I think seeing me might be bringing up things from her past that she would rather not think of, especially at work,” She responds. She knows that this point will steer him more in a “thinking about our abusive foster mother” train of thought, which is definitely true as well. She's not about to out Catrina without her permission, regardless of how much Bow in particular would understand.

“That makes a lot of sense, you two had a really rough childhood and seeing you probably just surprised her and brought up some memories. Is that why you’re upset? Or did something happen at practice?” Glimmer pipes up as she walks in the room, setting a cup of tea down on the table in front of Adora which she gratefully takes, both so she doesn’t start fidgeting with her hands and so the mug can warm them from her commute home in the cold.

“I was just really distracted at practice, thinking about her and how much I missed her, how much she’s changed, how much I’ve changed too. I just couldn’t focus, and the coaches all just… looked so _disappointed_ in me for being so… shitty. I missed a ton of goals and even more blocks, I let the ball go in every exercise that we did. They gave me the usual punishment, you know, pushups and laps for everything I fucked up but eventually they just stopped counting because I just _couldn’t stop fucking up_ and…” Bow cuts her off before she can spiral further, crouching in front of her so she has to look him in the eye.

“Adora, you’re not a fuck up, and you’re not shitty. You have to stop thinking of it like that. They weren’t disappointed, they were probably just worried that you were behaving so differently. They were probably worried that something was wrong, bothering you. Everyone has bad days,” He reassures her.

“Yeah, stop bad mouthing our friend, we really like her and you’re wrong about her anyway,” Glimmer adds.

Adora snorts a laugh and takes a sip of the tea, letting it calm her. She’s still shaky, and would be on edge for hours, but the worst of the attack was behind her and their reassurance and reasoning always helped, “Thanks you guys. I guess… I guess my day wasn’t really as bad as I thought it was. I’m glad I have you two, to help bring me down when I’m like this.”

Bow and Glimmer share a glance and tackle Adora into a hug.

“Of course, we’re the Best Friend Squad.”

***

She manages to make it home and into the front door before falling to her knees, sobbing. It’s all she could do to even lock the car behind her as she stumbled in the door. She shifts over so she can sit down with her back against the wall, brings her knees up to her chest, and wraps her arms around them. The position was going to make her hip scream, but she couldn’t think about that now. She needed the pressure of her knees against her chest, or something to keep her from feeling like her heart was going to beat out of her chest entirely.

A presence materializes next to her and she’s being taken into her mom’s arms, rocking her back and forth, running her hands up and down her back, and caressing the side of her face softly with her thumb.

“I got you baby, it's ok.”

“I-,” She tries to start, but a sob cuts her off. 

“Sh, baby, you’re ok. Take your time.” Mom folds her into her arms tighter. She hasn’t let her moms, or anyone for that matter, see her this upset in a long time, but she finds that she really needs the comfort more than she would ever have admitted. It’s several more minutes of sitting there on the floor, letting her mom rock her gently before she calms down enough to take a deep breath and lift her face.

Spinerella sits there with her and lets her hold relax as her daughter calms, and pulls back to look at her.

“Did something happen? Are you ok?” She asks, worry marring her gentle features and making Catra feel guilty for making her upset.

“Kind of? Nothing happened, and I’m ok, I just… I saw someone today… I saw Adora.”

“Oh, your friend from the foster home? The one… that woman wouldn’t let us visit after you came to live with us?” Spinerella asks, shocked that a ghost from her daughter’s past, the biggest ghost in fact, had returned to her life so abruptly.

“Yeah, I saw her at work today. She knew me, recognized me. I just… I don’t know, I thought I would never see her again and it brought up all these memories I didn’t want to think about. And until today she didn’t _know_ you know? About… me. I could go on pretending that it wouldn’t matter, that it wouldn’t change anything between us if she knew, because it wasn’t something I had to think about. I just… What if she doesn’t want to be friends with me again? What if seeing who I am now disgusts her or she starts telling people?” She whispers, voicing her fears over Adora being back in her life. For as long as she could remember she had wanted Adora back, but she didn’t think she would ever have her again and didn’t think these were things she would ever have to worry about. She was out to everyone she knew that she wanted to be out to, and hadn’t had to worry about someone’s reaction since high school. So Adora arriving into her life brought back feelings and fears that she had successfully moved on from, that she didn’t realize could rocket back to the surface so quickly. 

Spinerella sighs, “Baby, I can’t tell you what she’ll do, or if she’ll react badly or not. I can’t promise she won’t talk about your past to people and out you. But tell me something, how did she react when she saw you?”

Catra thinks for a minute before responding, “Honestly? She looked kind of starstruck, like she didn’t know what she was seeing. But when I asked her if she remembered me she got this smile and this twinkle in her eye and said, ‘How could I forget? You’re my best friend.’ It was… wistful? Like she thought she was dreaming. Then I asked if I would see her around and…” She trails off, the corner of her lip turning up in the beginnings of a smile.

“And?” Her mom prompts, sensing the sudden change.

“She said, ‘Yeah Catrina, I’ll be around.’” She smiles, remembering the gentle tone of Adora’s voice and how soothing it was to have her use her name, her real name, back at her. She’d thought about it, dreamed about it. She couldn’t stand that all of her memories of Adora were tarnished by a name that didn’t fit her anymore, that never fit her at all. But now? Now that she knew what her name sounded like on Adora’s lips she didn’t want to think about anything else. She wonders what Adora thinks of that name, if she thinks it fits, or if she recognizes how close it sounds to Adora’s nickname for her. She loosens her grip on her mom’s shirt and the tension in her shoulders and face melts away, thinking about that look in Adora’s eye when she saw her, the recognition. Adora didn’t look confused or judgmental, she looked like she had seen an angel for the first time.

Her mom just smiles and says, “Well honey, I don’t want to judge the situation for you, but it sounds an awful lot like she is just happy to see you, to have you back. It sounds like, whatever she was thinking, the last thing she was going to do was start throwing around a name you don’t use anymore.”

“But… What if she isn’t? What if she just didn’t know what to say and she’s sitting at home thinking right now about who I used to be and what I used to look like and she’s _disgusted_ by me? What if… What if she hurts me like Jill and Cameron did when they found out?” The insecurity is back, and her voice is small.

Spinerella gives her a fierce look, and says, “Baby, no matter what, your mama and I will be here for you. I’m not telling you not to be cautious, because you know better than either of us how important it is to protect yourself, but what I am telling you is that we’ll deal with that _together_ as a _family_ if it comes to that. Just focus right now on the positives, on how you saw her again and you might get the chance to have her back in your life.”

Against her better judgement, ignoring the burns still left on her spirit from the last time she trusted someone and had it backfire on her, she allows herself to smile at that.

Maybe, just maybe, she could have Adora back.

***

The panic she felt earlier from just how poorly she performed at practice, just how right she proved Ms. Weaver every time she fucked up like that, faded further into a mind numbing exhaustion. The rest of the evening was quiet, processing her friends’ encouragement and trying not to let her bad day sour the fact that today she saw someone she thought she would never get to see again, someone who meant the world to her and for a second seemed like she meant the same back. She eats dinner in relative silence while Bow and Glimmer sit next to her studying, not wanting to leave her alone after her attack. She hopes they know how much she appreciates them, how much they ground her and keep her from falling further into the darkness she was trapped in for all those years before she met them.

Hot water sears the sores on her shoulders when she steps into the shower, eyes stinging as tears well up and fall. She’s used to it by now, and it's not bad enough for anyone else to notice. If there is one thing Ms. Weaver taught her, it was that wasting others’ worry on herself was selfish, and she should do well to remember not to take advantage of other peoples’ kindness and consideration. She knew she shouldn't let her into her head still, nearly 3 years after the last time she saw her. The woman shouldn't still have this power over her, but she would think things about herself and she genuinely wasn't sure if it was her voice or Ms. Weaver's. She tried to push those thoughts out, replace them with affirmations of love that she knew her friends had for her. Sometimes, though, Ms. Weavers’ voice was louder, and it shot through her with a force she wasn’t prepared to counter. It filled her with doubts and fears that she thought she had escaped long ago, but were still just lurking under the surface, where they would always be.

She gets in bed, pulls the thick comforter up to cover her chest, and starts reading over her biology notes with the warm glow of her bedside table lamp helping her settle in for the night. She fully intends to study until she passes out, knowing that tomorrow is the one day of the week she doesn’t have work or practice and was planning to sleep in for her afternoon class. Her shoulders and back could use the break, especially since her shifts at work were going to be getting significantly more physical now that she was done training.

A thought hits her, just a flicker of the conversation that she had been replaying over and over again in her head ever since she left work today.

_Catrina_

All those times when they were kids and Catrina would lay on the ground in a patch of sunlight; 

How Adora started calling her ‘Cat’ because of it;

How she eventually started calling her ‘Catra’ and just how _close_ ‘Catra’ sounds to ‘Catrina.’

She thinks, for just a second, that maybe Catrina chose that as her name because of _her_.

She isn’t arrogant enough to allow herself to think that completely, but for just a moment she lets herself think that Catrina loved her so much she decided to carry a part of their childhood with her every single day.

If that is true…

That is a gift Adora will cherish for the rest of her life.

***

Catra sits on the edge of her bed, fingers brushing over the photo she kept in the drawer of her bedside table; the only photo she had of Adora. She used to be in it too, but her teenage anger ripped it in half and threw the image of her younger self away long ago. She didn’t want photos of herself from back then. Her moms had taken all of the ones they had down to keep in a scrapbook for themselves, replacing them with pictures of her from the last couple of years. It was another thing that they did without her even needing to say anything, noticing the way she would eye them with disdain when she walked into a room but not wanting to make them get rid of pictures of their child. The photo was worn, white lines where it folded in her pockets and the ink had worn off, curled edges, softened corners. She wishes she had kept it in better condition, put it in a frame so she would never experience the day where Adora’s face wasn’t there anymore. But for the longest time she kept it in her pocket because she needed Adora, even if she knew they couldn’t be there for each other.

The woman she saw today had changed so much; taller, muscular, a kind and soft but sharp and guarded look on her face. She probably didn’t see it herself when she looked in the mirror, but when Catra looked at her she could see the buildup of pain. But more than that, Catra saw those same blue grey eyes she fell in love with as a child.

She thinks that if she saw that same 9 year old when she looked at Adora today, then Adora probably saw her 9 year old eyes twinkling back at her.

She didn't know yet if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

She falls asleep holding that photo to her chest, lips stretched into a hopeful smile.


	3. Cardamom and Sandlewood

There hasn’t been a customer in hours, days getting shorter and cold setting in meant that most people weren’t out to do home improvement on a weeknight at 8:30. On a busy night the warehouse would echo with the sound of saws tearing through lumber, bags of concrete slamming down on rickety metal carts, rubber mallets hammering lids on paint cans, the hum of electric ladders and forklifts retrieving stock for customers, and the general chatter of excited conversation. The atmosphere would be buzzing with energy, a constant hum of noise. Tonight it was quiet, the energy of the day being sucked out of the door by 6:30 pm when the rush hour, post work shoppers finished their errands and left the warehouse empty. Everyone pretty much stuck to their departments, doing some stocking just to keep busy and keep management off of their backs. If the store was as dead as it was tonight, you didn’t want to be caught with your department in a mess. Adjacent departments would find themselves in conversation, and every once in a while the echo of a laugh would float down the long corridors. The supervisors from Electrical and Plumbing would pass by the paint desk and wave once an hour or so, taking a lap around the store in an attempt to keep their energy up, but for the most part Catra didn’t see anyone. 

She’d fallen asleep on her 15 on nights like this, so she was trying to keep busy. She had stocked every product she could in her department, even getting an associate from Flooring to drop a pallet for her so she could put away some cases of caulk. She cleaned the nozzle on the tint dispenser, refilled the reservoirs (a task that usually fell to the opener but she was feeling generous and insanely bored) and was now sweeping the aisles even though there wasn’t a spec of dust anywhere from her round of sweeping two hours ago. In between these tasks, she’d hidden at the back of the aisle pretending to organize the tarps while she reviewed two entire powerpoints for her Econ class on the Google Slides app on her phone. She could go loiter by the Service Desk, they usually had the best gossip, but she wasn’t sure she felt like talking to anyone, and there wasn’t an excuse to walk up there since she had checked for returns three times in the last two hours alone. She sees the cart of drywall in front of the service desk and makes up her mind that, while her department might not have returns, there was one department that did.

Consequently, there was one person she found herself wanting to talk to.

It had been a week since her interaction with Adora, a week of Adora waving at her with a gentle smile before making her way across the store to the Lumber department. They hadn’t talked, and Catra doesn’t know if it's because Adora doesn’t want to talk to her, or if it's because she wants to give her space. She sighs, grabbing the department’s mobile phone in case the Service Desk needs to reach her and putting it in her apron pouch before checking the aisles of her department for customers (spoiler alert, there aren’t any) and heads in the direction of lumber before she can change her mind, pushing the cart of drywall with her. She needs to know one way or another why Adora hasn’t made any effort to talk to her.

Lumber is spotless, of course. Adora always poured 110% of herself into everything that she did. The floor was clear, a line of sheet goods and lumber carts down the center of the widest aisle in preparation for any customers who may not have grabbed a cart on their way in. Even the pallets that were widely decided upon as “not worth restacking because no one bought that ugly pre-built fencing anyway,” were in perfect order. She found Adora in the back corner of the store, restacking a bundle of pressure treated 4x4s. She can see her biceps flexing, bulging and straining the sleeves of her shirt. Even with her flannel and apron on, Catra can tell that the woman is absolutely ripped. She lifts each piece of lumber easily, large hands gripping and stretching the ligaments in her forearms, veins throbbing. She manipulates each board with complete control. She winces and rolls her shoulders before bending over again to pick up another board.

The motion is enough to break Catra from her momentary stupor and she swallows the saliva that had been pooling in her mouth, annoyed by how _thirsty_ she already was for her best friend. Adora hadn’t spotted her yet, so she observes for a moment while she ponders what type of greeting would be most appropriate. She can’t tell if she wants to go for guarded or friendly since this is the first actual conversation she will have with Adora in eleven years, but ultimately decides that authenticity is what she should go for.

She whistles and says, “Damn you better put those guns away, the security team is gonna get concerned.”

Her eyes widened.

_Why the literal fuck did I say that?_

Adora jumps with a squeak, and turns to face her, eyes twinkling and grin splitting her face when she sees who it is.

“Catrina!” She walks over, rather quickly, and almost pulls her into a hug before she thinks better of it and freezes in place with her arms open.

Catra rolls her eyes and starts walking away, gesturing over her shoulder when Adora doesn’t move, and begins leading her to the aisle where she abandoned the cart in search of her friend. She walks over to the cart and gets on one side, slipping her hands under the first of 5 pieces of drywall that need to be restocked.

“I got your returns for you, since Paint is right by the Service Desk,” She says when Adora gives her a confused look.

“Oh! Thanks so much!” And she quickly gets on the other side.

One by one they move the pile of drywall onto the pallet on the shelf. They were lucky the drywall was stacked on a sheet goods cart, already putting each sheet horizontal so the transfer to the shelf didn’t require any twisting. Adora could have lifted them by herself, each sheet weighing in at 57 lbs, but it was always easier to work with a buddy than it was to stock shelves alone, and her back was grateful for the help that her pride would never have allowed her to ask for. They worked in silence; staring, making eye contact, blushing, and repeating until the cart was empty and there were still no customers left in the aisles and no one had called for Catra in Paint. 

Adora just stared at the woman in front of her, a blush present on her cheeks as she tried hard not to stare at her hair or her eyes, the curve of her jaw, the smirk on her lips she was all too familiar with, or the way her jeans hugged her hips.

_God, just stop looking at her all together_

Catra would make fun of her for being such a wreck if she didn’t find it incredibly sweet. She thinks for a second about what she should do, her whole plan to keep the woman at arms length so she could assess if it was safe to get close again, but she finds herself unable to resist and holds her arms out in invitation with a smirk, “Get over here, dummy.”

That was all the invitation the blonde needed, having been holding back since the moment she recognized her in the hallway by the time clock and being too afraid of the shorter woman’s reaction to scoop her into the embrace she no doubt had been yearning for. 

She surges forward and wraps her arms around Catra with a softness she wasn’t ready for. It was gentle, like she was afraid that not only could her physical strength crush her, but like she knew that the emotional weight of their reunion was enough to ruin her. The hug feels full, warm. It feels like part of Catra’s heart, a part she tried to ignore was missing, has just returned to her. It feels like coming home. She relaxes into it and just lets herself be held, Adora wrapping her strong arms around her to hold her in a tight embrace. She lets go of the fear she held, the conversation she needed to have before she really let herself trust her again, and just lived in this moment where she felt the love Adora had for her. A hand presses flat against her lower back, fingers digging in slightly, while the other wraps around her shoulders to hold her close. She tilts her head to the side, an invitation for Catra to tuck her face into her neck. It’s an invitation she accepts without hesitation. She breathes in deeply, smelling Adora’s laundry detergent and something about her that is distinctly cardamom and sandalwood. 

_Of fucking course she smells like an old man in the hottest possible way_

Somehow, neither of them is surprised by the peace they feel at being able to hold each other again.

Adora breaks the silence, “Can I ask you a question? I don’t… I don’t want to upset you so you can say no. But I don’t think it’s bad, just…. Maybe a little personal? Again, you can totally say no-.”

“What’s your question?” She cuts off, when she could tell Adora was rambling.

“Can I still call you ‘Cat’ or ‘Catra?’ If… if it reminds you of stuff you don’t want to think about I get it, I’ll call you Catrina and I won’t mention it ev-”

She chuckles a little and Adora cuts off her own nervous chatter when she feels the puffs of breath on her neck. “Yeah, dork. My moms call me Catra. Nobody else does, though, so maybe… Just outside of work?”

“Out-outside? Of work? So you want to like, see me outside of work?”

“Well yeah, I was kind of hoping… I just… I have one worry,” She says, pulling back and looking up at Adora, still close but needing to look her in the eye. She hadn’t planned on being so friendly, falling into her arms so immediately upon starting the conversation. She was supposed to suss this out way sooner, maybe act coy and aloof while trying to gather the intel she needed.

Nothing like that had ever worked when it came to Adora. It hadn’t worked when they were kids and evidently it wasn’t going to work now. She had always seen right through her, and it wasn’t surprising that it was still true. No matter what she tried to hide, Adora could always tell when something was bothering her and would bust down her walls with a sledge hammer made of love and support. It was scary, that it worked on her after all of these years, that trusting the other woman came so naturally to her. She hoped desperately, perhaps against her better judgement, that Adora wouldn’t hurt her with this power she still held. The pain from years of rejection from her peers simply because of who she was taught her how important it was not to trust too easily, too readily. The woman she had loved since they were children was already cracking her resolve to stay away.

“Anything! What is it?” She looks nervous, but eager.

“I don’t think I should ask you here, because I don’t think I could handle being at work still if your answer isn’t… What I need it to be. Can we talk after?” She says, suddenly aware of where they are and the fact that technically, any customer or coworker could walk in on their conversation. If Adora blew up, started asking her questions she wasn’t ready to answer and pushing her, and it outed her, she wasn’t sure she could come back to work here again. After work was the safest bet, so if Adora wasn’t accepting of her, she could at least go home to be alone.

Adora’s face falls and she looks nothing short of crushed, “I really would but I need to catch the bus right after. It comes at 11:05 and it's the last one for the night that gets to the transfer stop in time for the bus that goes all the way to my apartment.” She looks so sad and regretful and something deep inside Catra wants to wipe that look off of her face and make sure she is never the reason she has it again.

“What if I drive you home? We can talk on the way there and I’ll drop you off?” She tries, hoping that she doesn’t have to put this conversation off any longer. She can’t get attached again if it’s just going to hurt her in the long run, even though these last few minutes have made her feel more whole than she has in a long time. At the same time, she doesn’t want to wait any longer.

“Yeah, yeah ok. I would really love that, to get to talk to you, I mean. See you at 11?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you at 11,” She smiles, a genuine smile, as she begins to back away to return to the Paint department. 

Adora tries to back away too, but runs into a cart and nearly falls over. They both laugh, Adora blushing as she recovers and waves at her while she makes her way back to the paint department. It reminds her so much of that innocent smile and excited wave that she gave her, the last thing she saw of Adora as her new parents drove her away from her foster home and away from Adora.

She swears she’s coming back for her this time.

***

By the time they reach Adora’s apartment complex they still haven’t talked beyond complaining about customers, that asshole Dave from millwork, and the night shift supervisor that has enough beef with Catra that she puts pallets so close to the paint counter that she has to climb _over_ them to escape. Between these little bits of conversation they settle into a silence that is more comfortable than one would expect, excitement and hope buzzing in the air between them. Just being in each other's presence again is doing something to both of them, pulling dusty old photos out of the back of a cabinet and reminding them of the children they were, the connection they shared. They’ve always just clicked like this, a silent comfort to each other.

Catra looks over at Adora at stoplights when she’s looking out the window and observes her. Her sharp jawline and the ring through her eyebrow, the skinny jeans that hug her muscular quads and calves. The rise and fall of her chest is a welcome sight, the most concrete evidence that she is still there, though it seems labored and a pang of worry hits her. She’s not without scars. There’s a barely visible pink line across the bridge of her nose, and Catra remembers a jagged, raised, white lightning bolt that runs from her elbow to her wrist along the outside of her forearm. She knows, realistically, that some of those scars were accidents.

She also knows that some of those scars were put there on purpose, and her stomach fills with dread at the thought that she knows of at least one person who gave them to her.

There’s just so much she missed, and her knuckles go white as she grips the steering wheel thinking of all of the things she could have been there for, could have stopped, if Ms. Weaver had let her and her moms come back to visit Adora. They lost so many years, and it’s clear by Adora’s reaction to her in their limited interactions that she didn’t want to lose contact, that the choice was taken from her. She has this urge, this need, to know everything she can. She wants to know if Adora was adopted, if she has other friends, if she has a family now, if she goes to school, if she’s in love, if she’s happy.

She passes a silent prayer to the stars that the woman next to her is happy.

It’s dark, the dash lights out after Catra shut the car off. Adora, vigilant as ever and fluent in her ticks reaches a hand out to cover one of hers, gently wiggling their fingers together to pry hers off of the wheel. She rubs soothing circles on the back of her hand with her thumb and waits for her breathing to even out.

“Cat? What did you need to ask me?”

She shuts her eyes, squeezing them so tight she sees stars behind them. This is it, this is the moment she has to let go of the dream and put it all in Adora’s hands. If she doesn’t accept her the way she is, if she still thinks of her the way she was back then, it would have to be over.

“Did you miss me?”

The hand holding hers squeezes, “Of course I did, Cat. I missed you every day. I… I don’t understand?”

“No. Did you miss _me_ or... did you miss _him_?” She grinds out.

She hears Adora’s breath catch, and the hand gripping her heart squeezes.

“I missed _you_ , regardless of what you looked like or how you presented back then. That doesn’t matter to me, because on the inside it was always _you_. I missed my best friend, who consoled me when I was hurt or upset, who played with me and laughed with me, who made my life so much better just by being in it. It doesn’t matter what you looked like, I never missed _him_ but I always missed _you_.”

She chokes down a sob, and pulls her hand back to cover her face.

“Cat? Did… what did I say wrong? Please, if I hurt you I want to know what I-” She’s cut off by a watery laugh.

“I’ve been waiting eleven years for the opportunity to see you again, to see if you saw the real me or not, to see if you wanted the real me,” She turns to look her in the eyes and giggles a few more times. Adora is breathless with one single thought running through her head;

_Fuck, she’s beautiful_

Catra leans over and rests her head on Adora’s shoulder, winding their hands together again. She had her answer to the question she had been asking for the last eleven years, the fear that plagued her in the dark of the night when she was alone with her thoughts and all she could do was lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and hoping that if Adora knew what she was going through she wouldn’t hate her. There is still fear, apprehension that things are too good to be true, but she can’t hold back anymore simply because she is afraid that things will go wrong. Not when it feels this good to have her back even just this little bit so far.

She isn’t sure how long they sit there, holding hands with her leaning her head on Adora’s shoulder and Adora leaning down to place kisses on top of her head. Neither of them says a word, letting their joined hands squeeze when they need affirmation and feeling a squeeze back when they need reassurance. Adora’s warmth seeps into her, and she’s willingly letting it lull her into a sense of security and comfort. It’s long enough for the car to go cold, their breaths fogging up the windows and a shiver raking through her.

“I live pretty far out of the city, I should head home for the night,” Catra whispers, fighting to make herself pull away. She really had to go if she was going to get home in time to get any amount of sleep before she had to be up for class tomorrow.

“You can always stay here if you need to. I know we haven’t… I know you don’t know me too well yet, or my roommates, but I promise you’re safe here, always. I hope you believe me when I say that I wouldn’t ever suggest something that wasn’t. If you’re not ready yet that’s ok, I just wanted to let you know that,” Adora says back, looking into Catra’s eyes, hoping to show just how serious she was.

“I believe you, I really do. But I can’t tonight. I just… I _know_ you wouldn’t hurt me and if you trust them then your friends are good people who wouldn’t either, but I need to be careful. I… I can’t run that risk right now. I hope you understand…”

“I do, I promise I get it. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, anything that makes you feel unsafe or feel exposed or vulnerable. We really haven’t been in each others’ lives again long enough for you to trust me with any of this and I am so grateful with how much of you you’ve shared with me so far,” Adora says, gaze unwavering as she looks Catra in the eye.

“Maybe sometime soon, but not tonight. I just… I want to trust you. I want so badly to trust you, you have no idea. I can’t right now though, not all the way. There is just… There is so much to be afraid of when it comes to letting people in, for someone like me, and I know in my heart that isn’t you, but I also didn’t think it was…. I didn’t think it was _them_ either, but I turned out to be wrong about them,” She says, sniffling as she tries to explain herself while beating down the memories trying to resurface. She wouldn’t be in any condition to drive if she kept thinking about it.

“Hey, hey, Cat,” She takes Catra’s hand and threads her warm fingers between smaller ones, squeezing to bring her back to the present, to the car outside of her apartment and out of that stairwell in the back corner of that high school. Even after all of this time, Adora can tell when she needs to be grounded.

“We can take this as slow as you need to. If you’re not ready to bring your past back into your life yet, I can quit. I can find another job and you won’t have to see me so often.” The suggestion shocks Catra, and she immediately knows that she doesn't want that for either of them. She isn’t surprised to see that one thing about Adora that hasn’t changed, is the way she immediately puts others before herself. She wouldn’t let her make things harder for herself, when she got that job because she needed it.

“No, no you don’t have to do that. I’ve wanted you back in my life since that day we drove away from you. I don’t want you to quit either. It wouldn’t be fair to make you get another job because of me. I just need a little time to convince myself this is really happening. Today has just been… Well I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how overwhelming this all is.”

Adora’s smile is understanding, “Of course, whatever you need.” She unzips her backpack and rips a corner off of a page in her notebook, taking out a pen and leaning on the dashboard to write for a moment before turning to hand the scrap of paper to Catra, curling her fingers to close smaller ones into a fist. She zips her backpack and hauls it off of the floorboard, leans over to place one last kiss on curly brown hair, and reaches for the door handle.

“Drive home safe ok? I’ll see you Saturday at work?” 

“Yeah, I’ll see you Saturday.”

She throws that same lazy smile, mouth slanted, and gives her a “goodnight” so soft it’s like she was afraid her voice would shatter the moment like glass. The bond they were reforming was delicate, fractured and cracked by years of separation and pain on both sides, and the sutures were just starting to drag the edges back together. They were both worried that the threads would snap, pulling apart further when the illusions they were entertaining about what the other’s life was like were stripped away like varnish and the mystery of the bare wood beneath was revealed. This was old, a connection they couldn’t deny as they fell back into themselves together, but at the same time it was all incredibly new. They were older, wiser, and there was something magical about how seamlessly their connection was starting to reform.

With that, Adora opens the door, a burst of cold making Catra shiver, and drags herself out of the car and up the sidewalk that lead to her building. Adora turns back around, leaning on the door in a way that was probably supposed to look nonchalant, and stands there waiting. Catra sits there for a moment, the silence of the car blanketing her, and realizes what Adora is waiting for. She smiles at the thought, the care the other woman was already showing her, and turns her car on. Once Adora has seen that her car has started without any trouble, she nods and waves, turning around to disappear through the door and up the stairs to her apartment. 

Reaching a hand up to the steering wheel and the other to the gear shift she finds that her fingers are still curled around that scrap of paper, and she bumps the overhead light on to unfold it. She finds a phone number and a message.

_No pressure, I won’t ask about it later if you’re not ready, but if you want…_

_I’d just like to know when you get home safe_

_Adora_

Catra pockets the note, turns the light off, and begins the drive home with a giddy excitement and a smile on her face. 

***

Adora closes the door to her apartment and leans against it, closing her eyes and tilting her head back. The sigh she lets out relaxes her stiff shoulders, the firm door pressing into her back. The apartment is warm, a stark difference from the frigid wind that stabbed through her on the short walk from the car to the building. She can feel her cheeks warming, though not entirely from the change in temperature. 

They were friends, and she wanted to be there for Catra as friends if that was what she needed. She didn’t dare let herself think that Catra would want more from her, and was content to beat down those feelings for as long as she needed to if it meant making Catra comfortable, getting her to trust her again. A rather counterproductive thought slipped through her internal filter and presented itself at the forefront of her mind;

_I just gave my phone number to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen_

Briefly, she allowed the thought to widen her grin.

Bow and Glimmer look at her from the dining table where their books and notes are spread out, cups of tea sitting next to them, wearing oversized sweatshirts. Bow is holding a pillow in his lap, hugging it as he leans forward to look over it at his notes, while Glimmer sits with her legs crossed, glasses reflecting the blue glow of her laptop screen. Their worried expressions turn to understanding, gentle smiles when they see that she isn’t upset.

“Hey, good day?” Bow prompts.

She opens her eyes to look at both of them, a tear forming at the corner, and nods.

“Yeah, really good.”

She pats Bow’s shoulder and ruffles Glimmer’s hair, a gesture that gains her a playful huff, as she makes her way past them to her room.

***

When Catra gets home the house is dark, and she creeps quietly across the den and into the hall that leads to her bedroom. 

She collapses on her bed and pulls out the scrap of paper from the pocket of her sweatshirt, looking it over. She doesn’t want to get hurt again. At the same time, though, she wants to go back to that apartment complex, drag Adora back into the car, and fold herself into her arms and never let go. Even the most cautious side of herself couldn’t deny how good it felt to be in her arms.

She settles for putting the number in her phone, and a brief message.

_Hey, it’s me. I made it home safe_

The reply comes concerningly quick, and she hopes Adora is winding down for the night instead of getting ready for a study session.

_Adora: Thank you for letting me know! Glad you got home safe_

She knows Adora doesn't want to push her, so she gives her a nudge instead.

_Are you the 5-2 shift Saturday?_

_Adora: Yeah, you?_

_Sure am. Want to take lunch together? We can eat in my car and talk?_

_Adora: I’d love that_

She thinks hard about the phrasing of her next message, but decides a little flirting couldn’t really hurt. Flustered Adora was cute, anyway. She couldn’t deny the attraction she felt for the tall, muscular woman, and she’d be lying to herself if she said there wasn’t a part of the back of her mind that wanted something more. 

_It’s a date_

The bubble appears and disappears three times; Adora typing, deleting a message, and retyping it. She decides to have mercy and follow up, steering them in a slightly different direction. She likes to think all of those messages Adora was deleting were actually just flustered keyboard smashes.

_Text me any time, dummy. Goodnight_

This one is a little easier to reply to, and Adora replies almost immediately, clearly thankful for the subject change.

_Adora: Will do, goodnight! <3 _

The little heart makes her breathing stutter, a blush dusting her cheeks. 

For once, instead of thinking about what could go wrong, she falls asleep smiling. Adora wants her in her life, just the way she is.

Her dreams swirl grey-blue. They’re electric with lightning bolts made of shimmering blonde and the thunder of a heartbeat against her ear. 

Some moments, if she lets herself drift to just the right spot, she smells cardamom and sandlewood.


	4. A Swirl of Stardust

The clock strikes 1:50 and there is a hum of shuffling papers and bags being zipped, shoes squeaking on the floor and students muttering between each other. Catra makes sure the spot of wet paint from her previous class is dry, pulls on her leather jacket, loops her scarf loosely around her neck, and makes her way out of the building. It’s a short walk to the nearest bus stop, and she shivers and pulls her jacket tighter around herself when she feels the wind stab sharply through the knit of her sweater. It was always windier in the city, gusts funneling between the buildings and accelerating like a wind tunnel. It nipped at her ankles, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. How were people supposed to know she was queer if she uncuffed her jeans? It was out of the question, and she made a mental note to wear longer socks next time she wore this pair of vans. It’s only mid October and she shudders to think how much colder it would get as fall transitioned into winter. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to stop herself from thinking about how much warmer she’d be with a certain set of arms around her.

She steps into the shelter of the bus station and pulls out her phone to text the blonde while she waits. 

_Catra: So A: it’s fucking cold and B: wtf is this yellow shit everywhere?_

_Adora: …..You mean sunlight?_

_Catra: Yeah you know I don’t leave the art building all day mondays. It’s dark when I get out at 8_

_Adora: aw I’ll have a coffee waiting for you for braving the cold for me_

_Adora: wait does the art building like… not have windows? Are you ok in there? Should I send help?_

_Catra: In history we close the blinds because the sun hits the projector screen and nobody can read it. The sculpture lab is in a weird room in the basement with like one window that is behind a bush on the outside. When we’re doing charcoal my prof likes to close the blinds so we can be ‘intentional’ with our light’s direction. For like, shading purposes and shit. Idk she’s very dramatic_

_Adora: ok saying “on the outside” isn’t comforting. I feel like you need to see the sun more._

_Catra: Wow someone is spoiled by that rec center made entirely of windows. I love this building. How many people can say they’ve breathed the oldest asbestos in the city?_

_Adora: I don’t think that’s something I want you to be saying_

_Catra: It builds character. I’m building character_

_Adora: this is excellent development for your character on Grey’s Anatomy who ends up in the hospital with a respiratory disease_

_Catra: Trans people on TV die anyway so like, at least it’s respiratory failure and not a made up fatal condition caused by hormones like they usually do_

_Adora: Ugh the cishets, caught ruining things in the act. Petition to stop calling it ‘representation’ if it just wildly spreads misinformation_

_Catra: If I see myself die on TV it’s not representation smh_

Catra boards the bus as it pulls up and stands near the front, only a few stops away from the Student Union where she was meeting Adora. 

As it turns out, ‘slow’ wasn’t really in Adora or Catra’s vocabulary, and their friendship had advanced quickly since the night that Catra had given Adora a ride home. They fell back into step like they had never been separated; laughing together, sharing secrets late at night on whispered phone calls when neither of them could sleep and the phone sitting on the bedside table was too inviting to ignore. Their interactions held that familiarity, but were new in their own ways because of the glaring attraction they had for each other. They started seeing each other all the time, meeting for coffee or lunch between classes on campus. They both had to slap themselves when they realized, a full week after exchanging phone numbers, that they went to the same school. When they shared the same hours at work they would eat lunch together in Catra’s car, the privacy allowing them both to be more themselves than they could up in the stuffy break room. They’d shared private study rooms on the top floor of the library quite a few times, staying late into the night. Catra would tell her stories about her moms; growing up with them and the adjustment of living in a house where she actually felt like she belonged. She would skip over her coming out, but would talk about some of her transition and how supportive her parents were, the first friends she made in college and her passion for art. Adora, in turn, would talk about meeting Bow and Glimmer, their parents, their friendship, how she got into soccer, and her scholarships for school. There were a few gaps, but for the most part they had been slowly introducing bits and pieces of that mucky layer of bad memories that lie just below the good ones. 

They facetimed during midnight study sessions, not even needing to say anything to feel like they were together. The sound of pens scratching paper, fingers tapping on keyboards, exasperated sighs, and the occasional chuckle when one of them realized they had been doing the entire page of math problems wrong and had to redo the three previous questions (and the brief psychotic break before switching to a different subject after the two wasted hours) were all the sounds they exchanged for the majority of the calls. Adora would glance up at her laptop screen and observe Catra’s face, the way she squinted when she was focusing, the way her fingers gripped her pen. Adora wouldn’t let on that she just couldn’t stop looking at the way Catra’s neck curved down to her collarbone and shoulder, on display as her t-shirt or sweater hung off of a shoulder. She’d follow the line of her visible bra strap and imagine the spot where it would connect to the rest of the fabric. Sometimes she would wear a button up and Adora swore that with each passing hour another button would find itself undone and her greedy eyes would laser in on the lace outline of a bra, secretly hoping that tonight would be the night that she would catch a glimpse of the swell of her breast as her chest moved. Catra would catch her staring and smirk at her shimmering eyes and the dust of a blush on her cheeks as she looked away. 

Sometimes when Adora thought they were both studying, Catra was just keeping her company, and would spend her time with her sketchbook and a set of pencils drawing her new favorite subject. She practiced the arch of her brows, the curve of her nose, the way her jaw set slanted when she was focused. She had pages and pages of those expressive eyes she loved so much, narrowed in contemplation and sparkling with mirth, puffy and sleep deprived in the most beautiful way. She drew Adora’s hands, their veins bulging as her long narrow fingers typed or drummed against a textbook. More than anything else, she found herself drawing Adora’s lips, the way her plump lower lip dimpled when she sunk her canine into it while she was reading, parted with her tongue poking through just before she realized she’d been doing that entire page of calc problems wrong, and pressed together in a line when she read an email from her professor.

The woman was a work of art, and Catra couldn’t get enough.

She spots Adora in the lobby, a nook in the corner with armchairs and side tables that made for a relatively quiet and secluded spot to eat, as opposed to the cafeteria on the floor below. She stopped short when she saw the golden hair practically glowing in a halo, beams of sunlight illuminating her. She hasn’t noticed her yet, absorbed in the textbook in her lap. She has turned two plush armchairs so that they face each other, a table between that holds two coffees and the tupperware container with Adora’s abysmally boring lunch of rice, beans, and salsa. She’s slouching with her jaw set at a fierce angle, a look she has been wearing more and more often as the semester has gone on, and Catra doesn't quite know how to bring up that she can tell something is wrong. She wants to say something, but she knows that there are things Adora has noticed about her that she definitely isn’t ready to dig up yet. It’s delicate, because if it were anyone else it wouldn’t feel like it was any of her business yet.

“Hey Adora,” She greets her, startling the woman out of her focus. She sets her messenger bag on the ground, slings her jacket over the back of the chair, and sits down. She reaches forward to grab the coffee cup closer to her, removing the lid so she can take a sip of the latte’s foam. The espresso’s naturally chocolatey notes and the single pump of caramel syrup lightly sweetening the drink tickle her taste buds as the warm liquid flows over her tongue. The moan she lets out at the flavor, the way it warms her from the inside, is almost lewd.

She can almost see Adora drooling. It makes her smirk, and she removes the scarf from around her neck to reveal a little more of her exposed neck. It makes Adora’s face erupt in flames, engulfed in a deep shade of pink, like she’d taken a shower that was too hot. 

“Hey, Cat! How’s your day going?” 

They sit there for the better part of an hour, Adora’s only free one between classes today. They talk casually about their worries over midterms, the boring staff meeting they’re being forced to attend at the start of November, the construction that has been making Catra’s commute even worse. It's a comfortable small talk that beats around what is really bothering both of them, just waiting for the other person to crack first and bring up what they really wanted to talk about. They were both obviously bad at asking for help and even worse at talking about their problems. It was a habit they had both been trying to work through, beaten into them by one deranged foster mother many years ago, and struggle upon struggle after that. Adora suffered there for way longer than she did, but Catra talked to her peers about her problems once and it backfired into an incident that left her with chronic headaches and hip pain, so she wasn't used to starting this type of conversation either. Adora takes bites of her meal, slowly. Catra observes, not for the first time, the way Adora’s breathing is labored, a permanent wince on her face, the deep cough she releases every few minutes, and the tension in her shoulders.

It’s enough to make her say something this time.

“Hey… you ok?”

Adora, for her part, tries to look confused. Her eyes shift back and forth, like she does when she’s about to attempt a lie, “Um...ha yeah I’m fine? Uh… why?”

Catra levels her with an unamused look and she has the decency to look away and blush.

“Look… I’m ok I promise… I’m managing, alright? I just… There’s something I can’t talk about yet, I’m not ready to talk about, because that would mean I would have to actually think about the way I feel and what is making me feel like that, and it will just open a full scale pandora’s box of things I _can’t_ afford to waste my time thinking about right now.”

“It’s not a waste of time if you’re in pain,” Comes Catra’s gentle whisper.

Adora takes a breath, a sharp gasp, like she’s all of a sudden remembering she hasn’t been breathing, at least not breathing _right_ and wipes at her eyes with her knuckles.

“Can we talk about this later? I just… I can’t do this right now,” Her broken whisper stings, and Catra is disappointed in herself for bringing it up when she knows that Adora has a heavy course load, soccer practice, and a shift at work later. She doesn’t deserve to be upset the rest of the day over something that couldn’t even be resolved right now, in the lobby of the Student Union. 

“Yeah, yeah we can,” She concedes.

“So, are you excited about your birthday?” 

Catra snorts, “The party and our movie night this weekend? Or our sleepover on my actual birthday?”

“Well, both. But I’m pretty excited for our sleepover,” Her smile is back, and Catra’s heart warms.

_I’d do anything to keep that smile on her face_

“Me too.”

***  
It was refreshing to spend an evening with her friends that didn’t involve studying for once. She was skeptical at first. Leaving the planning entirely to Scorpia and her girlfriend meant that she really had to be ready for anything the eccentric, excited woman had planned for her. As long as it wasn’t a bar or a club she was good, since half of their friends wouldn’t be able to get in anyway, and being surrounded by strangers with loud music and flashing lights wasn’t her idea of a good time. After several conversations where Scorpia asked her if she was absolutely sure that the physical nature of the activity wouldn’t bother her hip and the dark room with neon lights wouldn’t give her a headache, Catra, Perfuma, Scorpia, and Scorp's younger sister, Frosta, pulled up outside of the laser tag arena. Adora had asked her if she could invite her roommates, and she was thankful for the excuse to meet them in a public setting so they were already familiar with each other when she spent the remainder of the evening after the party at their apartment. She was sure she’d like them anyway, but it always made her feel safer when she encountered uncertainty with control over the situation. If she got to the apartment and something felt off, it was too late. However, if she met them ahead of time she could still cancel. 

If she made it that far, that is. She was sure that Glimmer’s competitive nature mixed with Frosta’s… feral gremlin energy, would be the death of her.

_No running my ass_

_If I get runover by those two and their murder duo energy, at least I don’t have to take my econ final_

The first game starts, and before she knows it Adora is setting the mood for the rest of the night in the most infuriating way possible. It’s also so incredibly sweet she doesn’t really know what to do with herself so she settles for an eye roll. She isn’t sure if you’re supposed to be able to identify when someone is trying to woo you, but she sure is aware that that’s exactly what Adora is doing right now.

Catra is lurking behind a wall, a solitary structure in the corner on the first floor, and realizes that she’s effectively trapped herself. She hears footsteps approach from her left and cautiously peaks around the corner to her right to see a clear lane, though she’s got a massive blind spot, being on the ground. The partition blocks her view of the upper levels, but she has to take a chance because she can tell by the delighted squeal and maniacle laughter that the murder duo themselves, who happen to be on the other team, are headed directly for her. They haven’t spotted her yet, but they’ll definitely look behind this wall for anyone from the opposing team. She’ll have to take the risk. She moves swiftly, nearly silent, for the ramp across the clearing from her, which leaves her open and vulnerable to attack for a stretch of 25 feet, bridges towering overhead from both sides. She knows she’s about to be hit, and just as she hears a shout and thinks she’s done for a blur streaks across her vision and Adora is in front of her, the lights on her chest piece flashing as she grins down at her. 

_She fucking body blocked me_

The woman in front of her is panting, clearly having sprinted over when she realized that someone from the other team was about to tag Catra, and it’s a good thing the lights are off so no one can see her blush. The blonde’s annoying smile splits her face and as soon as she arrived she was gone, leaving her completely bewildered with a slightly damp spot searing the side of her head.

_She fucking body blocked me, and then kissed me on the cheek_

Catra hears giggling and whips her head around to glare daggers at Perfuma, who covers her mouth and continues giggling as she walks in the other direction. Catra looks around to see if anyone else saw, and is horrified when she looks up and finds that Bow and Scorpia are standing next to each other practically crying with hearts in their eyes. Catra, taking advantage of how distracted everyone seems to be, jogs the rest of the way to the ramp and continues up to the second floor to perch in a tower overlooking the clearing in the center of the room, grumbling the whole way. 

_Is this flirting? Is this how she flirts?_

Unbeknownst to her, the blonde’s thoughts ran in a similar vein. _Is this flirting? Am I doing this right?_

Adora, completely out of nowhere and with a speed she’d never seen before in a human being, dives in front of her to block her from being tagged every time she finds herself at the other end of the opposing team’s laser guns. Catra doesn’t understand how she just _knows where she is_ and _knows when she’s in danger_ and can _get to her so fast_. She’s exasperated, and ends that round getting tagged 0 times, a number that is severely below anyone else. Adora ends the round getting tagged more times than anyone else. She does it in every subsequent round after that as well until they scramble the teams and they end up on opposite sides of the laser tag war. When she sees their names lit up in different colors on the screens she turns to Adora, prepared to throw a smirk at her, and is shocked to find that Adora is _still_ grinning at her like an absolute idiot. She has no idea what she has to be smiling about, since they’re on opposite teams and her plan to just protect Catra with her life obviously ends here.

Oh how wrong she was.

Because, while it irritated her teammates to no end, there were no rules saying Adora couldn’t fling herself in front of her anyway. The difference in these rounds was that, while Adora’s chest piece obviously wasn’t going to flash with friendly fire, she found it necessary to fall to her knees with a dramatic groan. The look on her face as Catra looked down at her said it all. She was absolutely delighted with herself. 

Catra raises her laser gun and fires directly at Adora’s chest piece, point blank, and it flashes when it hits her target. She smirks down at Adora, leans down so their faces are millimeters apart, and ghosts a feather light kiss on Adora’s sweaty forehead. 

Adora watches her hips sway as she practically struts away and decides then and there;

_I’m going to fucking marry her_

***

Catra grins, sipping the last of her glass of wine as the credits roll on their second movie of the night; Bow and Glimmer cuddle on the armchair sharing a cupcake leftover from the party while Adora’s head rests in the crook of her neck. Her slender arm is wrapped around Adora’s wide shoulders and, while the position makes her feel physically smaller, it also fills her with a sense of power. She’s holding Adora in her arms, and when they’re like this she’s the one protecting the other woman. Empty pizza boxes are stacked on the coffee table next to the bottle of wine, several cans of soda, and glasses of water. She looks down and sees Adora smiling back at her, a blush on her cheeks from her own glass of wine. She can’t believe how comfortable she is, sitting here with Adora and her roommates in the home they shared, love practically buzzing in the air between all of them. She gets a taste of the kind of love Adora got to experience once she met Glimmer and Bow and let them into her life, and she couldn’t be happier that she had them. She was worried that if she hung out with the three of them it would just be a wedge in their dynamic, but they welcomed her in and incorporated her into their group like she never believed they could. 

“Hey Catrina, want another glass?” Glimmer says, picking up the bottle to pour herself another and gesturing toward Catra.

“Oh, no thanks. One was enough, I have to drive home later,” She responds, sending a smile and meeting her gaze.

“You cooooould spend the night? We have this comfy couch but… Adora’s bed is _big_ and _warm_ ,” Glimmer smirks with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, emphasizing the words “big” and “warm” in a way that should absolutely not have had the effect that they ended up having on her.

“Don’t tease her Glim,” Came Adora’s chuckle next to her as she got up and stretched. Catra instantly missed the warmth. “Now, I’m going to go change before we start the next movie. Catrina, do you want to borrow something comfy to change into?”

She freezes a little, and whispers, “Oh no thanks, I’m fine,” Hoping Adora drops the subject. Clothes were sensitive, and she didn’t really want to confront her issues right now, the thick denim protecting her like armor in a way she needed right now in front of Adora’s friends. Of course Adora doesn’t mention it and just nods, making her way down the hall to her bedroom.

Glimmer and Bow retreated to their room to change as well, leaving Catra on the couch to settle in the silence for a few minutes. She gets up to stretch, surprised that her hip wasn’t bothering her, and walks around to take a look at the various posters, artwork, and framed photos that line the walls. One catches her eye; Bow, Glimmer, and Adora as little baby high schoolers in front of a Christmas tree with two people who couldn’t be anyone other than Glimmer’s parents. The five are wearing matching sweaters. By the looks of how Bow’s is clearly designed to be a crop top, she assumes someone knit those sweaters for them. Grins split their faces, a sparkle of joy shines in Adora’s eyes, and it brings a tear to Catra’s to see her that happy. She looks around at the others; school trips, birthdays, and sleepovers. It seemed that, though she was never adopted and had to live with Weaver until she was 18, she had no shortage of happy memories. She turns to the kitchen and sees something hanging on the wall by the fridge that she hadn't noticed until now, and approaches it to look with a critical eye. It’s oil on canvas; harsh ridges and deep valleys, waves and peaks, smooth streaks juxtaposed with anxious short strokes, and violent red lines torn across. She knows it well, and is shocked at the irony of seeing it years later in Adora’s apartment. She hadn’t imagined it would end up here of all places when she hung it on the wall of that coffee shop with a price tag in the corner.

“Hey, you ok?” Bow asks, coming up next to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. She jumps a little and he removes his hand and takes a step back, but she shakes her head to dispel some of his worry. She was just in her own world, looking at the familiar painting. He’s standing next to her in a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, with a small blanket wrapped around his shoulders and folded over his chest, waiting patiently for her to answer.

“Yeah. I was just looking at this painting,” She whispers.

“Oh! Do you like it? We got it at-”

She cuts him off with a smirk and beats him to it, “The Grind, downtown across from the hospital.”

“Yeah, how did you know that? Did you see it when it was still for sale there?” He looks beyond confused, and she thinks for a second that he’s actually kind of cute. She’d be sure to never let Adora know that she thought her friends were cute.

She smirks, reaching up slowly to grip the sides, leaving Bow time to tell her to stop if he didn’t want her to take it down. It didn’t belong to her anymore, after all. She removes it from its nail in the wall and turns it over to reveal the small printed label that she knows is on the back;

 _Dysphoria_  
_Oil on canvas_  
_August 2019_  
_Catrina Miaou_

Bow looks like he is about to explode, “GUYS! GLIM, ADORA.”

His shout and enthusiasm make her wince.

They both run out, Glimmer with a makeup wipe in her hand and half of her face gone and Adora trying desperately to pull a pair of sweatpants up the rest of the way, hopping on one foot in an attempt to get the cinched leg opening over her foot. She winces as she falls partially into the wall, knocking down a smaller canvas that falls on the floor next to her, which she quickly replaces when she finally gets her pants on. Bow has the decency to look a little embarrassed for screaming bloody murder in the kitchen with no explanation, but all that comes out is an excited squeal while he shoves the canvas into Glimmer’s hands and points excitedly at the label. Both of their eyes widen. Catra feels like she could die, embarrassment at their excitement replacing the smug feeling she had moments ago at stumping Bow. Glimmer hands the canvas to Adora, squeals and pulls Bow into a hug while they sing her praises, and she is truly thankful for their reactions, she really is. They aren’t even really speaking a language, just making excited noises that range from low hums to high chirps while they wave their arms and for a moment she worries that she’s lost the ability to decipher speech because of the look Adora is giving her.

All she can focus on is Adora’s starstruck expression. 

Her fingers trace over each ridge, like she’s reading the turmoil, the highs and lows, the anxiety, the elation, of each stroke in braille. Her eyes are flickering rapidly back and forth, trying to see in the painting the parts of Catra she hadn’t seen before, the parts she’d missed. Her jaw is slack, because closing her mouth would take an iota of concentration and she wasn’t willing to spare any of her brain power when she was trying to drink Catra in through her eyes. She knew Catra, her Catra, was an artist, but she had yet to see any of her work. She was entirely unprepared for the onslaught of emotions that battered her while she stared at something meant to reflect her most dreaded emotion. She thought the painting was nice before, added color and depth to their home, but she couldn’t imagine the kind of emotion and raw power that seeped out of it. The tiny stippled waves she thought were a nice addition before now presented an instability, a turmoil, when she was first discovering who she was and what that would mean for her future. Those angry red slashes, carving deep through the layers of paint almost to the core of the canvas, digging in almost to the _bone_ made her heart plummet, yet the idea that she’d survived whatever it was those represented, the event she had yet to really learn about, made her so proud and astonished. 

Tears gather at the corners of Adora’s eyes and Catra swears she sees a swirl of stardust trickle out along with it before looking at her with a passionate intensity. She steps forward, their bodies mere inches apart. Adora reaches around her slowly, arms circling her, as she hangs the painting back on the nail behind her and then pulls her hands back to rest on Catra’s waist. She pulls gently, and Catra finds herself against Adora’s chest with her face buried in her neck, heartbeat below one ear and voice in the other. She lets Adora rock her back and forth, whispering praises with her voice and her body, while she grips the back of her shirt tightly and breathes her in.

_"You’re so talented."_

_"I can’t believe how beautiful that is. I can’t believe how beautiful you are."_

_"I’m so proud of you."_

_"You’ve worked so hard and I feel so lucky to have you."_

Adora hopes she isn’t laying it on too thick, hopes she isn’t pushing more than Catra can take. The only time she has ever felt anything close to this level of connection before was when she was a child, and it was with the woman before her. She hasn’t ever experienced this need, this yearning, and while they’re not even really moving that slow at this point, lying to themselves if they thought they were being slow at all, it still feels glacial when all she wants to do is lean down and kiss her. Her greatest desire is to pull Catra to her bedroom, lay her down, and kiss her into the mattress until they’re one. She wants to hold her until the world fucking ends around them; until matter turns to stardust and evaporates into the cosmos, and even then it wouldn’t be enough. What they have now is delicate, and the last thing she wants is to push the other woman beyond where she wants to go this soon after getting her back. At the same time, she knows that Catra has feelings for her too. She can tell in the tender moments when they’re alone and she catches her lazy smile, in the heated ones when they’re having a passionate discussion and she can see in her eyes the moment it's about to snap into wild laughter. She has to wait until Catra talks about it, though. She has to wait until she’s ready. She has to know that Catra wants it too, because she wouldn’t dare let herself take something that didn’t belong to her. So with that thought, she pulls back, kisses her forehead, and releases her.

Glimmer and Bow are nowhere to be found, but Adora is certain she’ll get a full scale interrogation as soon as Catra leaves for the night. For now, though, she sits on the couch, pressed into one end. There is room for Catra to decide just how close to Adora she wants to sit. Catra smiles at her, both of their faces flushed, shaking from excitement. She seems to contemplate for a moment, deciding whether things have already gone past where they should have at this stage in their relationship, before deciding that she really couldn’t care less where they were _supposed to be_ right now. She climbs onto the couch and folds herself into Adora’s side. An arm comes to wrap around her, dragging a blanket off of the back of the couch to drape over both of them. They settle comfortably into each other, the low volume of the next movie filling the peaceful silence. Every once in a while Adora leans over to place a kiss to the top of Catra’s head and breathes in the lavender scent she always finds there. Catra’s hand finds her knee under the blanket, stroking and squeezing lightly. Every touch drives them forward, toward that point of no return where they can’t hold back any longer because what they’ve given each other, what they’ve taken, is more powerful than anything they’ve done before. Adora sets the remote down on the arm of the couch and brings her hand across her body to put in her own lap above the blanket. She reaches out an index finger and traces each of Catra’s fingers, from the tip up to one of the knuckles and making a U-turn to descend the next, through the blanket as they caress her own knee. The pressure on top of her fingers pressing her hand into the leg below makes Catra shiver, and once Adora has done several paths against each finger on that hand she moves her hand up to rest her palm on the smaller wrist below the blanket. Catra pivots her head to place a kiss on a firm, round shoulder and stays there, feeling the warmth of skin seeping through cotton. It makes her lips tingle, and she squeezes her eyes shut while her mouth pulls tight into a dimpled smile. Adora turns her head to nudge her nose against brunette hair.

Maybe ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ aren’t accurate benchmarks for a relationship that started before they could even spell their own names. Maybe other people’s scale for how a relationship was supposed to build didn’t really apply to them at all when they were written in the stars, a tale as old as time itself. In that moment, holding each other and being held, feeling the warmth and comfort of the person next to them, they both start to realize that moving a little bit faster might not be such a bad thing. They would talk about it soon, but tonight? Tonight was ethereal, an evening frozen between nebulae, where there were no expectations.

All they had to do was feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear if someone gives me a good last name for Catra I will change it but for now its "meow" in French


	5. The Only Woman On This Earth

The store is relatively busy. It was sunny, and people were far more likely to seek home improvement tasks when the weather was nice, the cheery mood that overtook on those autumn days when the sun was out brought forth a renewed motivation. It was still cold, the brisk fall breeze making outdoor projects unpleasant, so most shoppers settled for indoor tasks. It was a safe bet that Paint would be one of the busiest departments today, which is unfortunate considering how unbearable paint customers could be in particular, and while a lot of customers certainly made the time pass she wasn’t looking forward to lifting that many gallons of paint for them. She listens to the associate from Flooring rattle off a story about a customer that refused to believe that you needed to let hardwood flooring assimilate to the climate of your house for up to 72 hours before install, and was thoroughly pissed when their boards swelled and cracked a couple of days after installation due to the change in humidity, as she ties the orange strands of her paint dotted apron around her waist. Leaving her messenger bag in her locker and heading down to the time clock, she prepares herself mentally to begin her shift. 

_More than one asshole today is going to get 4 gallons instead of the 5 gallon bucket they actually need, and I’m really going to have to carry 4 individual gallons to the desk instead of using the hand truck for a single 5 gallon bucket_

The thought didn’t excite her, especially when she usually had to see those same customers later in the week when their 4 gallons didn’t quite get them the coverage they needed, and they conveniently forgot that she was the one who told them that they needed a bucket instead. 

Needless to say, she was ready for work to be over before it even started, and she was sure that the sooner this day ended the better. However, when she rounds the corner of the last display of ceiling fans and comes face to face with Adora holding a to-go cup of tea and a bouquet of pink roses in a vase, she stops dead in her tracks. Her brows are turned up and her blue-grey eyes are laser focused on Catra, shimmering with a level of affection that startles her into speechlessness. Adora’s mouth is slanted in a smile, like only half of her brain cells could tilt her lips while the other half remained starstruck as she looks at Catra like she’s the only woman on this earth. Customers and coworkers alike pass the two, some smiling and giggling at the flowers, but Adora’s gaze never wavers from Catra’s, and the shorter woman for the first time can’t fathom having anything less than Adora’s undivided attention. 

She’s never wanted someone so badly, or for someone to want her in the same way.

“Happy Birthday,” Adora breathes out, stretching her arms out to the sides to invite her into a hug.

Catra strides forward and embraces her, and Adora wraps her arms around her as tightly as she can with her hands full. The hug doesn’t last long, neither of them wanting to draw an unreasonable amount of attention or get reprimanded by a supervisor for wasting time on the clock. It lasts just long enough for Adora to feel the need to peck a tiny kiss to her forehead before pulling away.

“Happy Birthday, Catrina,” Adora repeats, thrusting the vase in her hand forward. They’re both blushing, and the heat of the moment transitions from metaphorical to physical as it paints itself across both of their faces. 

“Think I don’t own a vase?” Catra teases, taking the flowers and tilting her head down to smell them.

“I imagined that getting flowers and having nowhere to put them for the duration of your 8 hour shift is annoying as hell,” She teases back. 

It makes Catra smile, that she thought of everything, and she bites her lip.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me.”

“Of course I did, it’s your birthday. And every woman deserves flowers on her birthday,” Is the reply she gets, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Adora does that all the time, throwing out life changing, earth shattering statements like they should be obvious to everyone. 

She doesn’t understand how Adora just gets it, how she just knows what she needs to hear, but she’ll be grateful for the affirmation all day. She had class this morning, presentations in two of them, and the extra talking combined with the cool, dry fall air gave her voice a scratchy quality that rocketed her into dysphoria. That, combined with the part of her that still feared the way other people saw her because of her body, feared the classrooms full of students watching her while she stood at the front, made the words more meaningful than she would have been able to express. She was confident, but there was a part of her that still looked in the mirror before each day of school and saw the parts of herself that gave her away, that made her feel like there wasn’t any possible way other people wouldn’t see, wouldn’t notice. She tried to stop those thoughts before she could spiral, because she wouldn’t think this kind of thing about any other trans person, but for some reason it was a train of thought she just couldn’t get away from. She knew, on a realistic level, that her peers didn’t scrutinize her body when she was at the front of the room giving a presentation. They could barely be bothered to open their eyes at all during her boring business presentation, but she just couldn’t stop it. Her dysphoria wasn’t something she had talked to Adora about, but apparently she had picked up on her behavior and deduced what the cause had been rather quickly. 

She would be lying if she tried to pretend that tonight wasn’t at least a little daunting; knowing that being so close to just Adora without any distractions or anyone else around, trusting her enough to sleep at her apartment, was making her anxious. They’d hung out in public plenty; at school and work, coffee shops, the Student Union, but this would be the first time they would be well and truly alone, with Glimmer and Bow spending a few days out with his dads. She didn’t want to be worried. The fear wasn’t a result of anything about the way Adora treated her, and it definitely wasn’t rational. She’d been perfect, respectful and caring in all of their interactions. 

It made her wonder why she ever doubted Adora back when they first reconnected.

The flowers are a big conversation starter, and while the extra talking certainly isn’t helping, she does get to gush about her best friend/ almost _something_ and the movie night they have planned after work later. It brightens her mood every time she is carrying a gallon of paint from the shelf and sees pink out of the corner of her eye. When she is about to go on her 15 Adora jogs up, face flushed from the cold, with another cup of tea for her and a croissant. Another layer of her walls chips away and she melts at the thought that Adora would _run_ to the Starbucks at the other end of the shopping center on her own 15 just to grab another tea for Catra, just to show her she cares. The first half of her shift goes by much faster when she’s walking this high above the clouds, floating on the feeling of being loved, being this important to someone. She feels giddy; that feeling of seeing your first crush as a child when you step off of the school bus, smelling pollen in the air in early spring, putting icing on sugar cookies. It was hard to describe just how Adora made her feel, because she had never felt this much at once before, in a good way. She just hopes that Adora keeps making her feel like this, and that she makes Adora feel even a fraction like this in return.

She catches herself staring dreamily at the vase of roses and _rolls her eyes so fucking hard_ at herself for letting Adora turn her into such a sap as well. She knew the other woman was a major dork, but she didn’t think her own transformation into a pining loser would be so swift. It was almost overwhelmingly fast, and it left her reeling and exasperated all at once that her own defenses couldn’t beat back the onslaught of awkward flirting and gay panic. In her defense, Adora was an ‘all or nothing’ kind of person, and she had evidently decided that when it came to Catra she was on the side of ‘all.’ It was honoring at the same time that it was terrifying that Adora had deemed her worthy of putting in her all. It saddened her to think that there may have been people, definitely had been people, that Adora had given her all for just to be left hurt.

She hears the quiet snicker of her coworker next to her and blinks rapidly, realizing she was staring at the flowers.

_God dammit I’m doing it again_

If she could just get through her shift without collapsing into a blushing mess every time she looked at those damn roses, she could start showing Adora what it was like to give your all and have someone give their all back to you.

It was nothing short of what she deserved.

***

It was right around Catra’s lunch break when she realized that she was flying too close to the sun, and by the end of her shift her hip is absolutely screaming, her throat is on fire, and her head is pounding. She’s had a lot of time over the last few years to come to terms with the repercussions of the incident, and she really has learned to deal with it in most circumstances. This feels worse, somehow. She can’t cancel on Adora, she won’t cancel. They both needed this, needed the time together and needed the time to relax. They hadn’t seen a lot of each other in the last week because of their heavy load of school work, and Adora’s soccer practices really vamped up in the last stretch before the end of the season. It was more than just a night to hang out, to celebrate her birthday. She didn’t _do sleepovers_ and this was going to be the night that she gave a part of herself, the secret vulnerable part she didn’t let anyone else see, to Adora. The pain was something she could normally deal with. It was a chronic byproduct of an event she had suffered four years ago, and it dragged her down into a spiral of hopelessness remembering just who betrayed her in the first place, who she used to trust. 

She wouldn’t let this ruin it for her, not this time. The possibility of what her and Adora could become if she just finally let go and _trusted_ her was enough to make her stubbornly refuse to yield to the pain.

She’ll take an Advil from the bottle she keeps in her locker, and grab a few of the throat lozenges from her car on the way into the apartment. Once the pain set in it was usually here to stay, and she could either go be miserable at home, alone, or she could at least be miserable with Adora. It wasn’t a difficult choice.

She had to take this step, to show Adora that she trusted her and to show herself that it was ok to trust someone like this. She needed to prove to herself that absolutely nothing bad would happen if she let herself open up. If she didn’t, if she cancelled and pushed it back, regardless of the reason, it just put her farther and farther from what she really wanted.

She certainly couldn’t wait any longer than necessary.

***

Adora caught on to the pain she was hiding almost immediately, and sat her on the couch to rest while she tornado-ed herself around the apartment gathering various creature comforts. Apparently her limp was more pronounced than she thought, and her wince probably didn’t help her case either. She’d felt her eyes crinkle together against her will as she turned the car on and the volume of the radio shot white hot lightning through her ear drums and deep into her head, the sudden tension that strung through her body stabbed at her hip. There was no hiding it as she reached over quickly and slammed the volume to zero. Adora, who had looked concerned from the moment they met by the time clock, looked at her with even more worry as they rode silently to Adora’s apartment. 

The first thing Adora did was kneel at her feet, removing her shoes to sit on the rack next to the door, which alone wiped Catra’s brain of all conscious thought. Seeing Adora on her knees in front of her, looking up at her through her lashes while she cupped the back of her ankle in one warm hand and tugged her shoe off with the other, stirred something low in her stomach that the anxiety and dysphoria didn’t let her feel very often. As soon as the moment arrived it was gone, though, and she could hear Adora in the kitchen filling a kettle in the sink and clicking on a burner on the stove. She ran to the hall closet to pull something out, and then went to her bedroom. Catra protested, of course, not wanting to make a big deal out of something that she was used to hiding, but couldn’t deny how good it felt to have someone care this much. Sure, her moms saw through her pain all the time, and took care of her as well, but it felt so much different with Adora. 

It felt different when it was the girl of her dreams.

“What hurts?” 

Adora’s voice behind her makes her jump, a little embarrassed that she zoned out that fast. She has to think for a minute. Not about what hurts, no, her hip was searing a hole in her side, turning to stone as she sat there unmoving, willing it to stop. She was deciding if she wanted to reveal it to Adora. At this point, when they had been avoiding the topics long enough, it felt more like outright lying than hiding anyway. The problem was that, while she didn’t want to bother Adora with her problems, she also desperately wanted her to just _know_ already, so she wouldn’t have to hide it. And maybe if Adora knew about her chronic hip pain, or the headaches, or the dysphoria, maybe she would trust her enough to tell her about why her back always hurt and she had trouble breathing, why she always seemed so tense when the subject of food was brought up, why she was always exhausted, why she worked so many hours at the store when she was already so stressed and busy from class and soccer. More than anything, though, Catra was tired. She was tired of being afraid, tired of dancing around something so big that she felt like it was stopping them from really moving forward. At this point, it felt like these last couple of secrets, these last hidden fears and insecurities, were the only things holding her back. They were anchors holding her under water when she could reach her arms all the way out and feel the fresh air as the tips of her fingers _just_ broke the surface of the water. 

She was tired of hiding something that every day Adora proved herself trustworthy enough to know.

“My hip. It hurts. And my head. From an incident in high school,” She finally sighs out. It was an old injury, something she’d been dealing with for years, and Adora didn’t need to know the details right now, this evening when it was Catra’s birthday and they were trying so hard to become something new together. She’d tell her soon, but the truth was that, while she obviously still felt the residual effects, it was _over_ , had ended a long time ago. She'd said 'incident' though, willing Adora to connect the dots that what happened wasn't an accident, if only to make the news less shocking when they talked about it later.

“Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you?” The blonde asks, looking anxious to do something, anything, to make her feel better. She’s biting her lip, looking on the verge of tears herself, wringing her hands together. It fills Catra with guilt for being the cause of that frown on her face again, but that same sadness from earlier came back when she realized that this was a behavior that Adora learned because she had to. She learned to push herself and give and give and _give_ until there was nothing left of her. But Catra wasn’t _taking_ from her, and Bow and Glimmer didn’t take from her either. She wasn’t equipped to cope with it when she felt like it was her responsibility to give and the other person wasn’t going to take.

Catra knew where it came from, knew who instilled that behavior in her, and she vowed to prove to Adora that nothing that woman said to her was true. Nothing that woman made her feel was something she deserved and nothing that Adora did warranted the way she was treated, the way she was made to feel. It was a behavior that was instilled in her by a person who only knew how to take, whose only concern was what she could get Adora to give. 

“Nah, I took some Advil before we left, just waiting for it to work. I guess I should… I should...” She whispers, trailing off. This was the hard part, what she had been really dreading about letting herself open up to someone. While the story of the incident was something she knew she needed to tell, and she had been dreading it because it drug up memories she didn’t particularly like, this was the part that struck fear into her beyond comprehension. 

Adora knew, of course. She knew she was trans, and while Catra hadn’t explicitly told her that she hadn’t had SRS, she knew her when they were kids before any of that would have happened anyway. But knowing and seeing were two different things, and she didn’t want her old best friend, and new love interest, to realize all of a sudden that she wasn’t as cool with it as she thought she was. She’d always been too afraid of the reaction if someone got too close to her or her body, if she started something and the other person realized they didn’t want to finish it with her.

Adora senses where her train of thought is going, can see the wheels turning behind her distraught eyes and rapid breathing, and places a palm on her knee.

“Hey, it's ok right? Look at me, right at me. You don’t have anything to be afraid of, ok? I know you’re scared, that feeling vulnerable isn’t something you like, but I promise it's ok. Now, just tell me what you need, and I swear to you it won’t change anything between us, alright? There is nothing you could say to me right now that would make me think less of you,” She says, conviction beyond what Catra has ever heard from her. Her stare goes right through Catra’s carefully built walls, and she feels herself crumbling more in the careful embrace. 

She’d never liked it when people treated her like she was fragile, especially after the incident when their gazes held pity. She hated it when people saw her pain, saw her weakness. But there was something about the way it sounded coming from Adora that made her feel precious, like a jewel that just needed to be polished a little instead of a sheet of glass with a wide fracture down the center. Maybe being fragile, needing help, needing care, didn’t make her as weak as she thought.

She takes a breath and clears her throat, “I need to change pants.” Pajama pants weren’t exactly the most form fitting clothing, and their thin material and loose fit didn’t lend well to the body shape she needed, in more places than one. It was one of those things where she _knew_ people wouldn’t actually notice, but the tiny swell she saw there when she changed pants and put on slightly looser underwear than normal to relax for the night, was all she could focus on. 

Adora nods, a gentle smile conveying nothing but understanding. Unbeknownst to Catra, she’d seen this dysphoria before; when Bow fell asleep on the couch in jeans with his packer still in. He’s stayed there all night more than once because he knew the rough material would wake Glimmer and make her worry, but wasn’t able to bring himself to change into something more comfortable because it was just so _obvious_ to him when he looked down that something was missing. He’d stayed up late at the kitchen table too, when he didn’t want to take his binder off just yet. The way softer materials clung to you and made you feel exposed, made you feel like everything you couldn’t stand to look at was on display, made you cling to those few articles of clothing that protected you like they were armor. 

She isn’t going to assume anything about the way Catra feels about her own body, but has a pretty good guess by the way she has been guarding herself that she sees something that shouldn’t be there, and that the jeans she was wearing were her last line of defense against those insecurities. She plans on taking it to her grave that she feels the same way when she looks at her chest after she takes her bras off. She couldn’t count the number of times she quite literally couldn’t breathe, but still smiled when she walked by a mirror and saw her chest flatter than it ever would be if she wasn’t wearing the layers she was. 

“Ok, you know where the bathroom is, or you can change in my room if you want. Take all the time you need, ok?” She gives her an encouraging smile, squeezes her knee, and gets up to leave her alone while she gets changed for the night.

Catra took her bag into the bathroom and placed it on the lid of the toilet, looking herself in the mirror and trying to stop herself from rattling apart. This was it, the part she was the most afraid of. But wasn’t the reason she was always afraid, because she didn't want to be outed and find out what the repercussions would be? So Adora already knew, knew she was trans and expressed that it didn’t make a difference to her. Adora didn’t care, couldn’t care less what her body looked like as long as she was happy with herself. It was evident in the way she looked at her, the way she treated her. Adora knew the secret she guarded from the rest of the world and didn’t hesitate to relentlessly flirt with her anyway. This realization should have made her feel better, but it did nothing to stop the shaking of her shoulders or the tears welling in the corners of her eyes at the thought that maybe the problem wasn’t other people, maybe it was _her_. She had been hurt before, so the fear was rooted in reality, but how much of it was still just in her head? How much of it was her, seeing herself through that lens of internalized transphobia? She wanted so desperately to be accepted that somewhere along the line she forgot to accept herself.

Maybe it was time to start forgiving herself; for all the things that happened to her that weren’t her fault; for the impossible standard she held herself to; for the way she spoke to herself; for the way she thought about herself; for the connection she could have had with Adora sooner if she had just learned that maybe it was ok to put your trust in other people. She could have found her on social media years ago, but didn’t because the fear of rejection was just so prominent that she would rather _not know_ than have her back. That thought made her sick inside, and had been dwelling on her since that day they first saw each other by the time clock at work. To think that she might have gone the rest of her life without seeing the woman she now knew she couldn't live without just because she was owned, trapped, by her fear, was too much. But she had to let it go. 

She had to forgive herself for the things she did to protect herself when she was in pain. She had to forgive herself for the ways she hurt herself more when she was afraid.

Without wasting any more time she changes out of her jeans, the same ones that had been driving nails further into her hip all day, the ones that protected her from the impending wave of dysphoria, and into a pair of sweatpants. She steals herself for the confrontation that the voice in the back of her mind told her to prepare for, the one that she knew wasn’t actually coming, and exits the bathroom to make her way back to the living room.

As soon as she sits down Adora springs into action and sets to work plugging in a heated blanket, draping it gently over Catra and tucking it into her sides. It makes her giggle when Adora’s finger tips linger on her sides for a few seconds and giggles back. Her chest felt lighter, and seeing that familiar sparkle in the other woman’s eyes made the rest of her worry evaporate for the time being. She snuggles down, closing her eyes and trying to breathe through the pain that remained. The heated blanket is a healing warmth on her hip and she feels herself releasing more and more of the tension that had been coiled in her body from the long day and the stiffness from the colder weather. She’s cocooned, safe inside the warm shield on top of her. Eventually she hears the shriek of the kettle coming up to temp and Adora pouring the steaming water into a cup that finds its way to the coffee table next to her. She watches the blonde disappear down the hall, presumably to change her own clothes, and lets herself absorb this feeling, the familiarity of being taken care of by someone so distinctly _Adora_ and the newness of that person being capable of taking real care of her.

She feels a weight shift the couch and cracks her eyes open, the warmth lulling her into a peaceful haze, and sees Adora sitting next to her, holding out a hand. Catra takes it, a content and relieved tear rolling down her face. Adora brings her other hand up to stroke the pad of her thumb over a warm cheek, wiping away the tear. 

“Cat, can I…?” She gestures with her head and Catra nods, leaning forward so Adora can settle behind her and she leans her back on the taller woman’s chest. Adora fixes the blanket so it covers her and brings her arms around her, holding her tightly in her comforting embrace, cradled between her thighs. Thumbs stroke over her forearms and fingers intertwine with hers to settle crossed over her stomach.

“You’re ok, you’re safe here. I’ve got you,” Adora says, so softly that she wouldn’t have known the other woman had spoken at all if she hadn’t felt the vibrations in her chest against her own back. Here, between Adora’s muscular thighs and intertwined with her strong arms, she feels so safe that she allows her thoughts to drift to a future where her and Adora are like this far more frequently. They’re happy, no longer plagued by thoughts of their pasts, of the abuse they’ve suffered. They’re just together, and that's all Catra could ever want. 

Right now, a future like that, seems closer than it ever has.

Her reply is simple, “I know. Thank you.” Her lips have a numbness, like she’s drunk on the feeling of being supported, of being loved like this.

They lie there together in silence, Catra taking sips from the tea and listening to Adora’s breathing. They don’t even bother turning the TV on, too focused on each other, on the bubble they’ve created and the feelings floating between them, to even notice that the rest of the apartment is silent. Catra feels smaller than she’s ever felt, and she can’t bring herself to feel vulnerable when it feels this good.

She can’t wait until she gets to protect Adora too, from her thoughts and fears, from the voices in her head and the pain she feels.

Sometime in the night Adora nudges her awake enough to ask if she can carry her to the bedroom, not wanting her to wake up somewhere unfamiliar, but at the same time wanting her to fall asleep somewhere comfortable, and she nods. She sighs at the feeling of muscular arms picking her up and cradling her, before she is placed on a bed, an arm wrapping around her from behind. Adora leans forward, parts brown hair so the back of her neck is exposed, and kisses the skin there while she hums an incomprehensible yet soothing tune. Catra is once again lulled to sleep, a tiny ball safely nestled into an armored dome of firm muscle and silky skin; of strength and softness.

Adora doesn’t remove her lips from the warm skin in front of her until well after the body cradled in her own relaxes with slumber.

***  
Adora lays there, head propped up on her hand with her elbow resting on the pillow below her and her other hand outstretched to rest on Catra’s waist. She feels a little weird about it, but she just can’t pull away, can’t stop touching her and keeping up the contact that they had maintained since going to bed last night. She can’t remember the last time she slept that well, a peace she didn’t know she was missing washing over her as she finally got to hold Catra the way she’d wanted to since they were kids. Even when she was younger and didn’t know what it meant, she’d wanted to hold her like that, share an intimate knowledge of what it felt like to have her sleepy breaths puff out in the quiet of her bedroom. 

She takes these few quiet moments when the sun is just starting to rise and the apartment complex is quiet to trace a pattern into the woman’s side, fingers pressing into the flesh below, hand rising and falling with the deep breaths she took in her sleep. As the sun peeks through the curtain she sees that her speculation was correct, and a smile pulls at the corner of her lips as brunette hair streaks with gold and red in the shimmering amber sunlight. Her hair is thrown over the pillow behind her, and Adora’s eyes connect the dots of freckles that speckle the back of her neck, before placing a kiss to the sleep warmed skin there. She lets her lips linger for a fraction of a moment longer than she probably should have and moves to get out of bed as gently as possible. 

She didn’t plan on getting dressed for the day, but needed to put something on to conceal her chest and it was better to get it out of the way early so Catra didn’t see and didn’t ask any questions. The entire night was already longer than she’d gone in just a T-shirt in a long time, and it was strange to think that she was so hyper focused on making sure Catra was ok that she didn’t even consider how her own body factored into what she changed into for the night. It scared her, that she could let her guard down for that long without even thinking about it, that Catra had that effect on her. She chose not to focus on it too much, because her back and chest felt better today than they had in the year since she realized that wearing an extra bra and having it be a tiny bit tighter than it really ought to have been gave her an emotional relief that far outweighed the physical pain it caused her. 

She shakes her head, forcefully changing the direction of her train of thought and instead focused on picking out the sweatshirt that hugged her shoulders and biceps. She was staying in her pajamas, but she saw the way Catra looked at her at work when she’d walk over to the lumber department and watch Adora lift something heavy. She swore the brunette woman was about to faint when she watched Adora lift a 4’x8’ sheet of 1” maple plywood (weighing in at 103 lbs. not that she was, you know, keeping track) and she decided that there was no shame in accenting those vanity muscles. She took great pleasure in staring at Catra any time she could, so it was only fair she gave the other woman something nice to look at in return. She makes a trip to the living room to retrieve Catra's phone and the heated blanket, returning only to plug both in and drape the fabric on top of the sleeping woman. She heads to the kitchen and takes stock of what is in the refrigerator and pantry she knows to be hers, and sets to work getting out the ingredients to make pancakes. She finishes mixing the dry ingredients and is almost ready to start on the wet when she catches yellow out of the corner of her eye and notices that either Bow or Glimmer have bananas. 

She stares at them, dry mix on the counter next to her as she thinks agonizingly hard about something that really, in hindsight, wasn’t a big deal. 

They’ve told her that they don’t mind sharing their food. They’ve told her that she doesn’t need to ask permission to use anything in the kitchen that they bought. They’ve _told her_ that she has complete permission to eat anything in their kitchen, regardless of who bought it. She knows that they mean it.

That’s also what Ms. Weaver always told her, and she absolutely did not mean it.

She finds herself texting both of them, hoping at least one of them is awake to respond. 

_Adora: Can I use 2 bananas? I promise to venmo you for them, or I’ll get some the next time I’m at the grocery store, ok? I just really want them to make breakfast for Catrina and I didn’t want to bother you guys so early but her favorite pancakes are banana. So can I please use 2? It's cool if you say no!_

She cringes at how pathetic it sounds, how needy she sounds, and she feels bad for being so demanding and taking her roommates food when she hasn’t really given them anything in return. She tried to remind herself of what they always told her; that she didn’t need to give them anything in return because they wanted to give her their kindness, but it was an internal battle that she lost every time. The urge to accept help, to let them pay for some of her food, to let their parents pay for her food, was beaten down by that voice in the back of her head that kept repeating over and over again that she didn’t deserve the help. She hadn't done anything to _earn_ it. She wasn't good enough, even when she was trying so hard to be.

The text she receives from Bow is more tactful than the one she’d receive if Glimmer was the one awake, and she’s thankful that he just gives her an answer instead of pressing her about it.

_Bow: Of course, buddy. Always! I love you and hope you’re having a good few days without us. Tell Catrina we said hello!_

She exhales the breath she wasn’t really aware she’d been holding, and gets to working mashing the bananas to make the wet mix, hoping to get the pancakes finished soon. She smiles at the thought of serving Catra breakfast in bed, the idea of doing something so simple and domestic making her blush already without even seeing the other woman conscious today.

She’s not sure if she should be so ready to do this every weekend morning of the rest of her life, because they aren’t even dating yet, but can’t help feeling that there isn’t anything in this world she’d want more.

***

Catra wakes up warm, but not the kind of warm she wanted. 

She’s in bed alone, and while she isn’t _cold_ , she’d much rather have been cradled in a pair of warm, muscular arms, than alone in bed. She’s grateful when she realizes that she is so warm because Adora has retrieved the heated blanket from the living room and draped it over her. She can still feel that silky top sheet and the weight of the comforter on top of it, but the artificial warmth seeping through the layers is very much welcome.

The smell of bananas and cinnamon waft into the room, and she takes a second to look around in the dim clouded daylight. Adora’s bedroom is neat, keeping it orderly in an almost militaristic fashion was expected in Ms. Weaver’s house, and clearly a habit that Adora kept up with even when she was free of the awful woman. She couldn’t blame her, because on mornings when she was especially tired and wasn’t awake enough to think properly she found herself making her bed and straightening her dirty laundry in the same way before she realized that she was in her home with her mothers and safe from that terrible woman. While those mornings usually resulted in her vanity mirror covered in some choice words, loopy cursive in bright red lipstick that she had to duck around while she used a the blade of a chef knife to apply her eye liner, she had a feeling Adora hadn’t really let herself learn how to express her feelings about it yet. There were pictures everywhere, just like the living room, along with a few medals from her soccer championships. There was an ornate framed charcoal drawing of a horse, and Catra smiled at the thought that after all these years Adora was still a giant horse girl at heart. It must have been an antique, the patina of the frame was too old to be new and she grew even fonder at the thought that Adora felt something when she looked at it that was powerful enough to make her buy it. There was a string of Christmas lights bordering the seam where the wall met the ceiling running the perimeter of the room, and she could only imagine the warm ambiance they would provide when they were on.

She hopes that the next time she’s in Adora’s bed they’re on. She also hopes that she’ll be in Adora’s bed again, but at this point it’s kind of obvious that she will.

She sees her phone on the bedside table and rolls her eyes affectionately at how _obnoxiously sweet_ Adora is when she sees that not only had she retrieved her phone from the coffee table but she has also plugged it into a charger. Her arm is met with cold when she reaches her hand out from under the protective heat of the blankets to check the time and to see if she has any notifications. Once she has a hold of it she quickly retracts her arm and tucks herself further in, chasing the remaining cold from her bare arms. She has a couple of birthday texts from the day before, and one from each of her moms checking up on her which she quickly responds to. It’s probably weird for them, not having her in the house when they wake up, and she knows they’re eager to see how the sleepover went and how she’s feeling. Waking up somewhere other than home is weird for her too, but not as much as she thought. Adora has this way of making her feel like she belongs with her, wherever they are and whatever they’re doing. She’s home when she’s with her. The looks they gave her, the looks they gave _each other_ when she told them that she would be spending the night with Adora were infuriating and embarrassing, so she wasn’t in any rush to give them detail. 

_What detail are they fishing for anyway? ‘Hey Ma, Adora held me with her big strong arms and kissed the back of my neck until I fell asleep after carrying me like I was a pillowcase full of feathers to her bed?’ Yeah I don’t need the smirk she’ll give me if I told her that._

A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth as she wakes up further, realizing that she feels better than she thought she could. The heating blanket was genius, and on top of being comforting it's also doing wonders for her pain and her hip feels better than it ever has in the morning after being in one position all night. Advil was cute and all, and took some of the edge off, but it never worked this much. Normally she had to do some pretty intense stretching to work out the stiffness and even then she had a slight limp for the first few hours of the day, so this was an all new level of comfort for her. She rolls onto her back and shifts her leg up, bringing her knee close to her chest slowly, holding it there for a few seconds, and then rotating it in across her body and back out before sliding her foot back down and laying her leg back on the bed. While the range of motion in that leg is reduced like it normally is, she’s pleased that she isn’t in any pain. 

A quiet knock makes her shift her eyes to the door and she smiles when a blonde head peaks through it to give her a grin.

“Oh good! You’re up! Can I come in?” She asks.

“Of course, dork, it’s your room after all,” She responds, throwing her a smirk. 

Adora knows it's her room, in her apartment, but at the same time she gave this space to Catra when she tucked her into bed last night and further when she left her alone to make breakfast this morning. So right now, it's Catra’s space, and she isn't going to take that away from her before she’s ready. She pushes the door open with her shoulder and Catra blushes when she sees that the woman is carrying a tray with two plates of pancakes and two cups of coffee.

_Did she seriously make me breakfast in bed?_

She sits up, reluctantly freeing her upper body from the warmth, smooths the blanket over her lap and watches Adora with a fond smile. She was worried Adora would have started her day already while she was still asleep, but the woman was still in her own pajama pants, fuzzy socks, and a sweatshirt. Catra shivers when she realizes that she can still see biceps flexing through the thick layers of the hoodie. Adora notices her shiver and leaves the tray on her desk momentarily to go over to her closet, pick out a knit sweater, and hand it to Catra so she can pull it on to cover her bare arms. She was cold, that much was true, but the cold was not what made the shiver wrack her spine.

“I put cream and sugar in your coffee, I hope that's ok?” She says nervously, placing a mug on the bedside table nearest Catra.

“Yeah, that's perfect.”

When she hands the plate over, Catra thinks she’s floating, and she covers her mouth to hide the wide grin. The stack of small silver dollar sized pancakes on her plate are all in the shape of hearts, and it's clear that Adora has used a cookie cutter as a mold for the pancake batter. The edges are smooth, not jagged like they were cut, so she thinks Adora went through an extreme amount of effort to cook the pancakes in the mold instead of just cutting them out. When she looks over at Adora’s plate she sees a stack of perfectly round ones, and it makes her feel a little extra giddy that she made hers so special. The pancakes are delicious, and she’d never admit it of course, but Catra swears the little heart shape makes them taste even better. The bananas and cinnamon are a nice touch, and her heart warms when she realizes that Adora remembers from all those years ago that banana pancakes with cinnamon are her favorite. 

_How fucking dare she do something this fucking sweet? Who does she think she is?_

Adora gives her space to eat, sitting at her desk chair and propping her feet up on the bed so they faced each other, though they ate in relative silence. Occasionally one of them would make small talk; ask how the other slept, what kind of homework they had to do, what their work schedules were like during the week. For the most part though, they remained distracted, in silent awe of each other. Once again they found themselves not needing words, letting their happiness radiate out and bounce back, buzzing between them with a renewed energy. There was something entirely new about it, something that shifted last night when Catra let herself be vulnerable in front of Adora. It felt refreshing, like the hesitation had simply fizzled out and they both came to a silent agreement that things were different now in a good way.

When Adora gets back from putting their dishes away she climbs onto the bed, scooting up next to her slowly so she has time to say something if she doesn’t want her that close. She props a pillow up against the headboard so she can rest her back against it and wraps an arm around Catra’s shoulders. The brunette scoots herself closer so her body sits flush with Adora’s and leans her head to the side to rest against a muscular shoulder. The blanket on her lap and the body next to hers are suffocatingly warm, but she loves it. 

It lights her nerve endings on fire with the urge to give it all back to Adora and then some. 

_God, I want to fucking rail her into next Tuesday and then make her breakfast in bed and watch those eyes sparkle and that skin flush. She isn’t going to know what hit her. It’s going to be so fucking sweet I swear to every star in this galaxy and the 3 closest ones too._

“Hey Cat?” Adora whispers next to her, tentative and shaky. She’s just as terrified as Catra is about doing something wrong, pushing too hard, and it's with this thought that she decides it's time to push just a little harder. She is so close to having something she’d dreamed about, wanted, for a while now. It's right there and if she just takes control and reaches out she could have her, she could have Adora the way she wanted. It was clear that her feelings were reciprocated, but that Adora wasn’t going to take the final step. If Adora saw it as a risk she wouldn’t do it, that’s who she is, and she clearly was afraid that this final push was too risky. Her cautious approach, feather light touches, apprehensive voice, were all the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place and Catra finally realized what Adora had been trying to tell her all along. 

Adora was begging her to take control, to take what she wanted, to give them both what they needed but she was too nervous to go for. She was begging Catra to just _take her_ because she didn’t know how to give herself to Catra without the direction.

Catra takes it.

“Yeah baby?” She replies, leaning further into Adora’s side. The taller woman exhales, blowing out a dramatic breath, and Catra can feel the tension leaving her body. It makes Catra turn slightly to face her, reach a hand up to slide her fingers along a sharp jaw, thumb her chin, and tilt Adora’s head down to hers. She stares into those blue eyes and sees love radiating out of them.

“Cat,” Adora’s voice is strangled, choked with emotion. Wetness pools in her eyes and she can’t look away from Catra’s powerful stare, begging with her quivering lips and shimmering eyes.

“Shh, I know baby,” Catra whispers just before leaning up and brushing her lips along Adora’s, touching the tips of their noses.

Adora’s eyes snap shut, and Catra parts her lips ever so slightly to close around the blonde’s bottom lip in a gentle cradle, sucking ever so slightly. A hand winds around Catra’s waist and another cups the back of her neck, fingers digging in and coaxing her forward. The kiss deepens, mouths moving against each other in a slow and languid dance, gasps and pants filling the silence of the room. 

Catra moves up to straddle Adora’s hips and for the first time in her life she doesn’t give a single fuck that Adora could probably feel her, untucked through her loose sleep pants, against her stomach. She presses forward, grinding and melting her body into Adora’s and gripping her tightly as she presses forward, forward, _forward_ until their tongues are one and neither of them could pull away if they wanted to. Catra’s hands cup Adora’s face before sliding around her neck and pulling her closer, tugging at the hair at the nape of her neck. Adora runs her hands up and down Catra’s sides, pausing to pull her hips forward more, earning both of them a groan before repeating the motion over and over and _over_ again. They’re both shaking, buzzing with the released energy of a supernova and shivering in sobs, tears running down their faces as they let themselves take what they wanted;

Each other.

Eventually, when they're out of breath and their lips are swollen they pull away and bury themselves further into each other. They hold each other, and let themselves be held, until there isn't anything left in this world but the other woman.

To each of them, the other is truly the only woman on this earth.


	6. Makes me Want to Know That Body Like it's Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entire second half (last 2/3 really) of this chapter is smut
> 
> If you squint there's substance, I swear

“Hey, will either of you be home this afternoon?” Adora asks, leaning on the doorway to the kitchen. Bow is at the table reading his history textbook and eating a couple of fried eggs with toast, while Glimmer waits by the coffee maker with her eyes half closed, munching on a bowl of yogurt and granola.

This had been a frequent occurrence since Adora and Catra’s relationship had taken off. With how little free time they had together between the pressures of work, school, and Adora’s soccer commitments, they were constantly working their schedules around each other to get any time together that they could. Catra had taken to driving Adora to practice after work, the dual purpose of giving them more time to spend together and saving Adora from having to endure the long bus ride into the city. Catra would then go to a cafe or the library to study until Adora got off work, but if Bow or Glimmer were home to let her in she would just hang out in the apartment until it was time to pick her up from practice. It was a routine that worked well for them, but sometimes Adora worried that it swung a little too far into her own interests.

She was happy when they were together, but when they were apart a weight settled in her stomach at the thought that Catra was the one putting all of the effort in, driving her to work and practice and their dates. It felt a lot like taking advantage of her, serving her own interests far too much. When she’d voiced those concerns though, Catra was quick to point out that she _liked_ how domestic it felt to coordinate their schedules and work around each other. That wasn’t even to mention the instinctual pleasure she got when the same people over and over again saw her pull up to drop Adora off or pick her up, walking together with their hands held and kissing before parting for the day’s activities. She also pointed out that, logistically, letting Adora take the bus around and waiting for her just wasted time that they could be spending together.

It made Adora blush furiously when Catra pointed out all of the ways Adora put effort into their relationship as well; packing her messenger bag for her when she was up late studying and knew that the action would afford her a few extra minutes of sleep, sneaking open the bathroom door to replace Catra’s towel with a warm one she’d just taken out of the dryer. Not to mention that they’d exclusively spent nights at Adora’s apartment and not her house, because Adora didn’t want her to have to commute so far in the morning and late at night if she didn’t have to. The measure of what was meaningful in a relationship went beyond acts of service or tasks, and just because that was how Adora had learned to show affection didn’t mean that it was what Catra needed from her. 

It was a reminder she needed, because she’d spent years with Ms. Weaver, wondering what more she could do to make her happy, knowing that the woman wanted proof of her dedication more than any silly emotional validation. It was something she struggled a lot with, understanding that anyone could want to do things for her just because, without wanting her to do anything for them in return. 

“No, I have a group project I am working on in the library and Glimmer has to stay late to do some editing on one of the media lab computers. I don’t think either of us will be home before 9. Right babe?” Bow replies, looking up to glance at his girlfriend to confirm.

She nods, “Yeah and I might be later than that if it takes too long to render, why?”

“Oh, if you were home I was going to see if it was ok with you guys for Catrina to hang out here while I am at practice, but it's cool,” Adora says. Even though Catra had insisted that hanging out in the city while Adora was at practice was fine, and she was safe, it still made her nervous. Catra, sitting alone on campus into the evening as the sun began to set and the buildings became less and less populated, made her unsettled. She couldn’t protect her all the time, no matter how much she wished she could, from the dangers that lie in wait for a member of their community. She’d seen enough headlines. If she was better, had been there for the woman when they were in high school, she might have been able to stop whatever had happened to her. She was opening up, sharing that her coming out wasn’t received well by the people she thought were her friends, but that was all the information the woman had given her thus far. She also knew that being in public at all had its own anxieties that she could easily help alleviate if the other woman just agreed to hang out at her apartment instead. Combining that with the fact that with the changing weather, pressure systems more frequent as winter storms began to roll in, Catra had been getting worse headaches recently which certainly weren’t helped by the loud atmosphere of the coffee shop or the stuffy library.

“Glim?” Bow asks, standing from the table and backing into the hallway wiggling his hips and doing jazz hands. She nods, a smirk on her lips and a twinkle in her eye. She winks at Adora and follows.

Adora quirks an eyebrow, confused, but shrugs and goes about making her breakfast. She’d given up understanding their silent connection long ago. The weird nonverbal interaction they did and only referred to as ‘vibing, my dude’ was something that she accepted was just their thing, and she didn’t question it. 

While they’re gone she takes stock of what she has in her cabinet in the corner, looking forlornly as she realizes that her bag of rice is nearly gone and her tube of oats only has one serving left. She usually had two for breakfast, delaying lunch if it could hold her over until later in the day. Then she might have a chance of skipping dinner and shaving the cost of an entire meal off of her day. But it looked like she’d have to add a little extra peanut butter to it and hope it held her over today. She’d run out of more traditional protein sources earlier this week, the store not having anything really on sale, but seitan was easy to make and vital wheat gluten was only a few dollars a bag. Pay day was this Friday, and grocery shopping would have to wait until the end of the week. Sometimes it took all of her self control not to break into her threadbare savings, the money left over from her tuition scholarship that she had sworn to reserve for when she graduated and really needed it, to pay for groceries. Luckily being on a sports team at a top research university meant she got free containers of protein and carb powders and could supplement with that when her cabinet started to get empty. The Student Union had a co-op with free meals for students who didn’t have much money, but she felt guilty asking for free food when she didn’t even pay her own tuition. There were students who really needed that service, and she didn’t want to take advantage of a system that she didn’t need, that wasn’t for her.

She’s jolted from her thoughts by footsteps shuffling back down the hall and snaps the cabinet closed, knowing that Bow and Glimmer had promised not to look in it but wouldn’t be able to ignore how empty it got toward the end of the pay period if they saw. It was a battle every time they saw how few groceries she bought and the last thing she needed was their pity or their charity. They’d gotten their parents involved once, and the hurt in their eyes as she practically ignored them for a week still haunted her. They didn’t know that she wasn’t mad at them, she was _ashamed_ of herself for letting them see and just couldn’t bring herself to face them when she was certain that the second she made eye contact she’d break down. They round the corner into the kitchen and see her standing there, a suspiciously small bowl of oats in her hand, getting ready to put them in the microwave for her breakfast.

“So! Bow and I talked,” Glimmer starts, trailing off, bouncing on her toes excitedly. She looks at him and their eyes connect, both of them giggling.

“And we wanted to tell you,” He continues, building the anticipation with a taunting that makes her smile back.

They’re both so cute when they’re excited like this.

“Yeah?” She prompts, grinning.

“If you’re not ready for it yet we get it, totally! Buuuuuut,” Glimmer meanders slowly through the next part of what is clearly their shared sentence. Maybe the braincell they’re sharing was buffering and that was why they were dragging this out so much, but she had a feeling they were taking their sweet time enjoying whatever this interaction was about to turn into.

“We have that spare key, and Glimmer and I are comfortable with it if you wanted to give it to Catrina,” Bow finally rushes out, unable to hold back the excitement any longer. 

“Oh,” Adora is stunned. 

She’d thought of it more than once on days like today, where she wanted Catra safe in her apartment, and wanted to spare her the boredom of waiting around even if she could occupy her time with homework. Their relationship wasn’t at a place yet where she was going to ask her to move in, that was pretty far down the road after some serious conversations with both her girlfriend and her two roommates, but for logistical reasons she’d wanted to give her a key for a while.

It was pure logistics, really.

***

The break room is as stuffy and loud as it always is, the charming laughter of the service desk associates who finally got to step away to complain about customers was echoing around the room, bouncing from wall to wall with their joyful retelling of their dumbest customers of the day. 

“And THEN this man really told me that we should refund him for plumbing fittings he had USED and then CUT OFF of his drain pipe to bring back here!”

“Why would I give you a refund of the full price of an item when it says right on your receipt that you bought it at the sale price? They’re getting dumber by the minute, honestly. Don’t show me your receipt and then you can get store credit for the full price but nooooooo they really want money back in their pockets that they didn’t even spend here! I was down to give you store credit for the full price even though I knew you bought it on sale, but you went and ruined it.”

She truly felt bad for them because, while she was obligated to stay within the perimeter of the paint desk and the three aisles that made up her department, she was free to walk about the store as long as there weren’t any customers and she got her work done. She could go hours some nights without mixing so much as a paint sample, but the service desk was constantly taking in returns and the cashiers were working with every customer that walked through that door. That was why, though the lifting hurt her hip more some days, she was thankful that she didn’t work at the register or the service desk. It had brightened her work days considerably to go hang out behind the store while Adora drove around on the forklift, moving bundles of lumber and getting orders ready. The look of concentration she got, tongue slipping out as she focused on the controls, made her heart flutter.

Sure, she got her occasional customer who insisted that they were going to apply deck sealer when it was well below the recommended temperature or above the recommended humidity, but they usually discovered that it wasn’t as good of an idea as they thought it was after a few months. That was the advantage to working in paint, that a lot of mistakes were apparent immediately but a significant amount of mistakes didn’t reveal themselves until quite a while later, so the customer had plenty of time to forget who helped them. 

She’d pretended not to know plenty of customers that came back into the store, having forgotten her face.

“Hey Catrina, can we talk for a sec?” She hears behind her, and she smiles at the timid softness in her voice. There wasn’t a single part of Adora she hadn’t fallen in love with, but the way she sounded so vulnerable just for her was something Catra found especially charming.

It all happened so fast, but with the floodgates opening that morning they hadn't slowed down and neither of them wanted to. It was nothing short of magical; this feeling of falling in love and being loved so much in return. It made Catra feel special to be loved by someone as passionate and enthusiastic as Adora, sure, but it also made her feel so normal. It made her feel normal to just be a woman who giggled when her partner did something sweet for her or when they went on dates and _called_ them dates, or when they talked late into the night about the things they were afraid of and were met with absolutely no judgement.

She couldn’t describe how good it felt to just _be_ two people in love, and it felt like she could abandon her baggage and just exist in this world where she wanted Adora, Adora wanted her back, and they got to love each other in a way those two misguided and scared children never could have imagined they could. It was still new, foreign to be this close to someone let alone have it be this person that had always meant so much to her, but she couldn’t hold back. The apprehension was thick at first, that same anxiety of doing something that would make them lose each other and it would be over before it really had a chance to begin.

The longer it went on, and the further their relationship got, the more she realized that it wouldn’t ever stop. Once again she finds herself thinking that it would be so much safer to slow down, to take it easier, but she was never good at controlling her emotions and these ones just let themselves out before she even knew it.

Her moms told her to embrace it, to let herself be in love with the idea and the action of falling in love, because falling in love for the first time was something she wouldn’t ever forget. 

As if she could spend even a flicker, a fraction of a second, not embracing this feeling, the way Adora made her feel.

She finishes shoving in her bundled apron and clicking the lock shut and turns to face Adora, who is nervously wringing her hands together, picking at the skin around her nails. She’s leaning with a forearm against the wall next to her, stretching herself up. She looks so much _bigger_ like this. She’s the same height, but she’s wider, taking up space that Catra finds impressive as well as arousing. Her flannel is rolled up past her elbows, the red and black checkers standing out against her pale skin and clinging to her biceps in a way that is borderline offensive. Sure, she’s completely dressed, but Catra thinks showing off her forearms like that is a direct attack on her personally, to her delicate sensibilities (and her drastically growing libido). Catra gulps down her arousal, trying to clear her mind of the thoughts that invaded when she saw Adora, let alone saw her looking at her like she is now.

“Hey, baby girl, whats up?” She says, grinning at the way Adora’s eyes glaze over for a second before shaking her head, like she’s trying not to get distracted.

“I was wondering….” Adora trails off, looking down with a smile so wide it probably makes her cheeks hurt and a deep blush covering her face, and it makes Catra smile softly at the way her girlfriend gets so bashful when she brings out the pet names. It isn’t the first time she’s been the cutest fucking person Catra has ever seen, and she doubts that it will be the last, but she still feels honored every time Adora lets herself open up like this.

“Yeah sweetheart?” Catra whispers, reaching a hand forward to drag the very tip of her index finger down a taught, muscular forearm. Adora shivers visibly, eyelids drooping at the action combined with Catra’s soft yet authoritative voice.

It’s not fair that Catra is pulling out all of the nicknames she uses on her when they’re alone, right here in the break room of their work place where it would be absolutely indecent to shove her against the wall and press their bodies close. 

Adora gulps before looking up and holding out the jacket that hung over her shoulder. 

“I know you’re coming to my last game tomorrow, the finals? I was wondering…. Well I was wondering if you’d want to wear my jacket? With… With my name stitched on the back?” She asks.

Catra shouldn’t have been surprised at the thought, because she had been going to a few of Adora’s games since they got together. They were always in the rec center, thousands of seats drowning her out, but Adora knowing she was there made all the difference. She still found herself blushing at the idea of wearing something of Adora’s. She wore her sweatshirts and flannels all the time, probably had more of Adora’s clothes in her possession than Adora had at this point, but the idea of wearing something with Adora’s name on it, the idea of identifying herself as _Adora’s_ meant so much more to her. She was proud to be Adora’s, to give herself and her heart to her in the private of her apartment or the little bubbles they created in the library’s study rooms or the booths in the back of the cafe. It was another thing to have Adora be so proud to have her, so proud to be hers back, that she wanted Catra to wear her jacket with her number and last name on it. Adora wanted everyone who saw Catra all day to see the number ‘11’ and the last name ‘Grey’ and _know_ that they belonged to each other. 

It was possessive, and entirely self serving. Catra knew that it was because Adora wanted to stake her claim on her in front of anyone and everyone who might see her.

Adora knew that Catra would have wanted to claim her in the same way. 

The whole ‘jock gives jacket to girlfriend' thing was vaguely reminiscent of a high school romance, though gay and trans people didn’t really get that sometimes. Certainly neither of them got the luxury of being kids experiencing their first loves, so now as adults it was as good a time as any.

Catra hadn’t dated before she came out, and while she was no stranger to dating and sex now, she found that more of her past partners were in it for the experimentation factor than because they liked her. They’d realize that her body didn’t live up to their fantasies of how it should work at the same time that she would realize that they were really only in it for the fetish of sleeping with a trans woman. 

Adora stopped seeking romantic partners when one too many got frustrated that she wanted to leave her shirt on, and didn’t want to stick around to earn enough of her trust for her to tell them why. The fact that Catra was so understanding already was news to her.

That was the major difference and to them, what made it more special. It had the added magic of being something they could tell was permanent. They were both older and wiser than either of them could have dreamed of being back then, and though their experiences gained them an accelerated maturity that neither of them really asked for, it still lended itself to the cause of making their relationship stronger than it might have been. Neither doubted that the attraction would have been there if they’d reconnected when they were younger. They both knew that regardless of what happened their connection couldn’t be broken, but whether they would have grown into the same people who were compatible into their adulthoods was something they would never know. They had a chance to grow individually as people before coming together into a relationship. 

Maybe they had to wait so that they could become better versions of themselves. Maybe if they met again in high school, Ms. Weaver’s toxicity would have flowed out of Adora and into Catra, ruining them both. Catra’s anger and hatred at herself and the people around her that she didn’t understand at the time, her tendency to lash out and seek to cause others the pain she felt, would have hurt Adora more than she deserved. Even if Adora stuck with her, she isn’t sure she would have wanted her to when she was like that. The blonde had always had a tendency to want to fix everything, to protect her, and while it wasn’t entirely unwelcome in their years together as children (though she never asked for it) Catra didn’t think she’d be able to handle Adora trying to solve her problems for her during the most difficult time in her life. Catra could tell by Glimmer and Bow’s passing comments about how different and how much better their friend’s mental health is now that Adora would not have been in a state to deal with the person that Catra was. She’d tried hard, worked on herself to get control of that rage and agony to harness into an outlet that was good for her, and she became someone she was far more proud of than the person she was. And now, with years of separation from Weaver, Catra could see that less and less of her toxic waste radiated out of Adora every day. 

She was still there, her voice bouncing around in Adora’s head. Out of nowhere and seemingly with no discernable trigger, Adora would freeze, breath going shallow, and stare wide eyed at the wall with her jaw set tightly. Her grip would tighten around whatever part of her she was holding and Catra knew that she was hearing it again, fueling her insecurities with a cruelty she vowed to try her best to alleviate. 

Catra would straddle her girlfriend’s waist, cradle her head in her hands close to her chest, and chase those thoughts away with whispered praise and kisses. She’d kiss her forehead and scratch at her scalp gently with her nails and stroke her thumbs over her cheeks, wiping away any wetness she found there. Adora’s hands would find her waist and grip her tightly, like she was afraid if she kept her eyes closed for too long the other woman would evaporate from her grasp as some sort of long term delusion she’d imagined in the recesses of her mind.

 _Good girl, I’ve got you_ She’d whisper over and over again, feeling the tension melt from Adora’s shoulders. The first time she’d said it, the words had slipped out unconsciously, instinctually. The unexpected response it garnered; the gasp and subtle moan, was enough for Catra to make it a regular phrase in her vocabulary. It filled Catra with pride in herself, that she could beat back the voice that plagued her girlfriend, protecting her from those dangerous and torturous thoughts.

While Weaver’s voice was loud, Catra made sure to be louder. 

She narrows her eyes into nothing short of a smoulder that has Adora gulping as she steps up closer, wrapping her arms around Adora’s neck, and pressing her body flush with the taller woman’s. She tilts her head up to ghost her lips across Adora’s and the quiet gasp, the choked noise Adora makes, sets her alight with want. She presses her lips ever so softly to Adora’s before pulling away, arms sliding along strong shoulders and hands coming to cup her flushed cheeks.

“Of course, baby girl, I would love to,” Is what she says, though she isn’t sure if Adora even hears her with that hazy, far away look in her eyes.

She lets out another gasp and blinks, long and slow, willing her drooping eyelids to open further before reaching out to help Catra slide the jacket on over the sweater she was already wearing. She feels fuzzy, like her brain is padded with cotton balls and her ear drums were suffocated by foam plugs.

Catra smirks, “Thank you princess.”

The thoughts she’d managed to get back flew directly out the window.

_Fuck me, focus_

Once the jacket was secured around Catra’s shoulders, shoulder seams hanging down her arms making her remember just how much bigger and more muscular Adora is than her, they pulled away. Adora pulled on the jacket she brought for herself, a black sherpa lined denim jacket that looked a little too good with her flannel and boots, and they joined hands. 

“Um, there is one more thing?” Now she looks genuinely nervous, like she’s about to say something a touch more unnerving.

“Yeah?” Catra reaches up to brush some sawdust off of her girlfriend’s head, tussling her hair and messing up her ponytail slightly. She laughs when Adora giggles and swats her hand away.

She stops short and shuffles her feet and its so _fucking cute_ how small she looks, how shy she gets.

She flutters her eyelashes and bites her lip, and Catra willingly takes the bait, falling for it to placate her lover, “Just ask me baby girl.”

Adora fishes something out of the pocket of her jeans, dark and ripped at the knees and thighs to reveal the line of her quads underneath, and holds up a key. Catra’s eyes laser in on it and understanding washes over her.

“Do you want a key? So you can hang out at my apartment when I’m at practice, and Glimmer and Bow aren’t home? You don’t have to take it! I just thought it would be nice not to have to wait around on campus so late waiting for me. Plus I kind of… Well I want you to have it.”

Catra thanks the stars that this isn’t an invitation to move in yet, because she is worried that she would say ‘yes’ and even with the speed they’re moving it would be weird to ask so early. Right? She shouldn’t want to move in yet, she shouldn’t be so ready to take that key, walk into Adora’s apartment, and make it hers too. They were barrelling forward relentlessly, and she found herself unsure if she should throw on the brakes and calm herself down before she jumps ahead and never leaves.

She could throw on the brakes all she wanted, because brakes didn’t work when you’d jumped the track and were careening toward what you could only hope was your destination.

She finds her smile softening and her gaze going a little hazy at the idea that Adora trusted her like this, a whole new level of comfort with each other to give her the power to enter her apartment, her space, whenever she wanted.

“Glimmer and Bow are ok with this, right?” She asked, already reaching out a hand slowly, palm up. She got along well with her girlfriend’s roommates, and was finding herself enjoying their company when she was at the apartment with them.

_Not that I’d ever admit it to them. Christ that would be annoying, I’d never hear the end of it_

“Yeah. They actually brought it up, because ya know… I was way too scared to if we’re being honest. I didn’t know how to talk to them about it but they seemed to get annoyed by me constantly asking if they’d be home to let you in. Apparently we’re the ‘most hopeless of lesbians’ so they figured it was a good idea to bring it up. Plus they really like you.”

Catra barks out a laugh, offended and relieved by the other half of the BFS (their words, not hers) and their accusations. 

Adora laughs back, dropping the key into Catra’s hand and folding her fingers around it before reaching down to take the other hand in hers to lead them out of the break room. Adora’s hand is larger, engulfing hers, fingers squeezing gently as they thread together. There are calluses on her palms from her hours at the store, but the backs still had a softness that, besides the bulging veins, reminded her of the way it felt to hold her hand when they were kids. Catra didn’t think there was anything more precious to her than those memories, but now she spent her time with her thoughts consumed by this older version of Adora, the one that was emotionally and physically scarred but still had a childlike wonder and excitement about her. She still wore her heart on her sleeve, and it was a beautiful thing to have the privilege of witnessing.

She could spend eternity like this, hands wound together, thinking about the woman she could now admit that she had missed more than words could describe.

She planned on spending as long as Adora wanted her, the rest of her life if she had anything to say about it, showing her how much she cherished her.

***

Something is different, in what Adora can only tell is a good way, when they lay in bed that night. It was all completely ordinary while they both studied for the finals that were quickly coming their way, made dinner in the tiny apartment kitchen, did the dishes, and sat back down to the kitchenette to study some more. They decided, well Catra decided, that after Adora’s third failed attempt to read through her notes without her swollen red eyes drooping shut that it was time for bed. They got ready together, brushing their teeth at the same time, elbowing each other out of the way half heartedly and giggling before taking turns spitting into the single sink in the bathroom. Catra changed clothes right there in the bedroom with Adora sitting on the bed setting her alarm for the morning, _their_ alarm for the morning because even waking up was something they did together. She looked up to see Catra making eye contact with her while she took her shirt off, lacy black bra cradling two supple breasts that nearly gave Adora an aneurism, worsening when Catra would smirk and bring her arms together in front of herself, crossing her arms and grabbing her elbows low on her ribs, pushing her cleavage together. Adora couldn’t tear her eyes away as Catra hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her pants, matching black lace underwear peeking out as she teased her with the threat, the _promise_ of more. She’d turn around, showing off the curve of her ass as she bent over to drag those jeans agonizingly slowly down her thighs and calves, arching her back as she pulled up her thin cotton sleep shorts and finally sent a heart stopping smirk over her shoulder at the stunned woman behind her. She pulled a thin tank top over her bra and laid back on the bed, an arm falling over her stomach and the other bent up to lay beside her head.

Before she can get too distracted, Adora walks to the outlet next to her window and plugs in the string of lights that borders her bedroom ceiling, casting a peaceful amber around the room. She turns back to Catra and sees her laying in bed, body glowing in the soft light.

She was a picture of perfection and if Adora didn’t know better she would swear that the other woman, laying in front of her like this, was pulled directly from her brain’s reservoir of deep and uncompromising desires. A tear forms at the corner of her eye at the overwhelming emotions that bombarded her relentlessly every time she so much as thought of the other woman, let alone got to look at her. She had to blink the tear away and sniff a little, pulling herself together enough to crawl up, agonizingly slowly, into bed next to her. One hand holds her up, so she’s laying against Catra, but with her upper body just far enough away to rake her gaze down her chest. 

It struck Adora that this, being with Catra was the most natural thing she’d ever done, the most welcome she’d ever felt anywhere. Glimmer, Bow, and their families had welcomed her into their arms openly and lovingly but she’d never felt like it was real to them, meant as much to them, as it meant to her. She knew she shouldn’t feel that way, but at the same time she could just tell that with Catra it was different, in a good way, the best way.

So when they settle into bed, Adora scoots up next to Catra and places her hand on her waist, pulling her closer until their fronts are pressed together with Catra enveloped between Adora’s legs, one thrown over her and pinning her down. She’s just so comfortable like this, letting Adora cage her here in her warm and protective embrace. She can tell that this is what Adora needs, chasing a feeling deep down that demands to take what she wants, to take more. It fills Catra with a renewed sense of devotion, that Adora’s body needed her in a way that the blonde didn’t even need to admit.

Adora presses a kiss to the forehead in front of her, smiling at the soft sigh she hears, and says, “Hey kitty Cat?”

It makes Catra’s breathe catch, and she’s sighing out a response, “Yeah Princess? What’s on your mind baby girl?”

Which is entirely unfair, because Adora has tried so hard to be in charge in their more intimate moments but it really just was not happening for her.

_All she has to do is call me one of her arsenal of pet names and I fold like a goddamn lawn chair_

Catra thought it was endearing, how Adora tried so hard to be assertive only to drop suddenly into a ‘please take care of me now, thank you’ mindset as soon as Catra so much as looked at her.

It was fair, really. Adora had been in control of her entire life since she turned 18, making every financial and life decision that Catra admitted first hand that she couldn’t have made without her parent’s help. She had to do it all on her own, and the burden of having complete control with no safety net to fall back on was something that was weighing on her more and more. Glimmer and Bow reassured her that they would always be there, that their parents would be there to help her, but sometimes it just wasn’t enough to hear something like that when she was told over and over again that any kindness she received had to be earned. Whether she noticed it or admitted it to herself was another story, but Catra could tell the kind of uneasy air about her girlfriend when it came to things like dates or hobbies, things that didn’t have a financial gain attached to them but were worth it for the emotional impact they had on your life. Adora had trouble with all of it, letting herself do things that made herself happy. It wasn’t just money related either, because Catra could see every time Adora pulled out a textbook while she pulled out a sketchbook, that Adora desperately wanted an escape of some kind, an outlet to let herself feel and express herself. That outlet used to be soccer, but the second a Brightmoon recruiter came to one of her games, soccer became her ticket to college and a sports scholarship that would take care of her tuition. Then it was mathletes, but then she had to focus all of her effort into school and making sure that her academic scholarships could cover rent. Before she knew it not a single aspect of her life was for her anymore, just because she enjoyed it. 

It just never felt like she was enough. But Catra had this way of making her feel like she was, and the other woman became her outlet, and this relationship was the one thing she let herself have just because it made her happy.

Adora feels Catra lean forward, kissing her neck right under her chin and down the column of exposed skin to her collar bone, biting gently. It earns another gasp and Adora’s fingers press further into her skin, indenting her flesh, with her hips jutting forward. She smiles against her throat when she feels nails digging further into her back.

Adora rolls Catra onto her back, kneeling between her legs so she’s wrapped around her, pressing forward until she’s flush with her girlfriend’s body. She feels every part of her pulsing with heat against her, and the fact that she is panting as hard as she is, that she’s as turned on as she is right now, makes her whimper. She runs her hands up and down Catra’s sides, from her hips caressing up her waist _just_ under her breasts and then back down again, the motion filling Catra with want, with need, teasing her further and further. Their lips are sliding against each other and Catra finds herself biting Adora’s lower lip, sucking it between her teeth and then into her mouth entirely while she tugs harshly at her hair, fingers threaded with blonde locks. 

Adora gasps, senses flooded with nothing but the sensation of Catra surrounding her, pulling her further and further in. There isn’t anything in the world besides the two of them cradling each other in a tight embrace with fingers pulling hair and nails biting flesh and she wouldn’t want to return to the rest of the world even if this was the last thing she was ever going to fucking do.

She tightens her grip, hands grabbing at Catra’s waist, and drags her arms toward herself so Catra’s back is arching up off of the bed just so Adora can show off her muscles and pull her even closer, impossibly closer. She’s never let herself _want_ like this before, never let herself even imagine what it would feel like to have exactly what her heart, her body, had always needed, and it makes her gasp to think that Catra wants her in this same way.

She’s tugging and pulling Catra how she wants her, and feeling this in control makes her smirk to herself. The woman below her is desperate, clutching at her tightly.

_Catra’s not the only one who can be in charge_

Catra smirks, feeling the way Adora is grinding forward into her and grabbing her so tightly in her large hands. Her shoulders are firm, like her muscle is carved out of stone and her finger tips, her mouth, her body was the only substance on earth capable of eroding away at the wall the other woman put up. She took great pleasure in tugging Adora’s head by her hair to wherever she wanted her. She’d pull back, the blonde letting out a gasp and panting as she leaned forward to kiss and bite along her throat and collar bone. She’d pull Adora’s head to the side and shove her face into her own neck so she could feel Adora’s teeth against her. She arches her back up so her breasts press into Adora’s chest, against her throat, doing anything she can to carefully and calculatedly manipulate her girlfriend into giving in to her most basic desire, the desire she knows she has if she’d just let go and let herself have this.

It was all so much, and not enough. Adora slots herself between her legs and grips so tightly she doesn’t think even a crowbar could pry her from the woman below her. It strikes her suddenly that the reason it didn’t feel like enough, the reason she still felt so lost and so far from the other woman, was because it _wasn’t_ enough. She _needed_ her, needed more, and she wanted her.

She wanted it so fucking badly. She wanted Catra, wanted her body and to use it to bring herself pleasure but a deep, animalistic, feral part of herself wanted to bring Catra pleasure more than anything.

She just needs more, needs to touch her, to have her.

She pulls back a fraction of an inch to ghost her lips against the brunette’s whispering, “Can I take this off?” While she thumbs at the hem of her shirt.

Catra nods smirking, “There we go sweetheart. Go ahead baby.”

Adora’s eyes narrow and she hears an imaginary sheet of glass shattering when she realizes that Catra was _teasing her_. She was taunting her with her lips and hands and body just waiting for Adora to get the courage to ask for what she wanted, and she lets out a dramatic sigh that makes Catra giggle for even thinking for a second that being on top of Catra, physically positioning her body over hers, gave her any sort of power during this.

She was waiting, patiently, for Adora to _ask for_ what she wanted, what she needed.

She was _making_ Adora ask for it.

It makes her so fucking wet at the thought that this entire interaction was something Catra orchestrated, that she knew her so well that she could top her from below, letting Adora think she was in charge until she was ready to send that smirk her way and reveal that Adora had never been, nor ever would be, the one steering the ship.

It also occurs to her that she doesn’t want to be.

She wants Catra to _have_ her, to take control and help her give herself what she had always been too afraid to ask for, what she never would have admitted she really needed. She wants Catra to see her, all of her; the fears and hopes and dreams and doubt and pain. She wants her to hold her tightly to herself and tell her that she’s a good girl, that she’s more than what she grew up thinking she was.

She finishes working Catra’s shirt over her head and even though she saw her without her shirt on already tonight, the sight of the black lace hugging her chest and the curve of her breasts makes her _shake_.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” She whispers, bending down to fuse their mouths together. She can feel Catra’s pulse quickening against her lips as she places wet, open mouth kisses down her neck getting closer and closer to her chest. She’s shivering, nerves buzzing and tingling, every molecule awake and alive.

Catra’s groan as she finds a spot on her neck to nibble is _obscene_ and she smiles as she places a slightly harsher bite on her shoulder, sucking briefly and running her tongue over it to trail kisses down the center of her chest. She tilts her head forward to press her forehead on Catra’s sternum and takes a second to try to calm her breathing, biting back another shudder.

Catra cups the sides of her head and pulls her up to connect their eyes, concern shining through the haze of pleasure.

“What is it baby girl? What’s wrong?” She asks.

Adora lets out a sob, a real honest to god _sob_ and says, “I just love you so much.”

It makes Catra gasp, breath catching in her throat as tears well up in the corners of her own eyes.

“I love you too, sweet girl. Now, come here,” She says, pulling Adora up to connect their lips again. She has a feeling that this vulnerability, this overwhelming emotion, is stronger than anything Adora had let herself feel before.

There was only one way to deal with that, though, so she pushes on Adora’s shoulder until she’s rolling over and Catra is on top of her. She ‘s straddling her girlfriend now, keeping her held between her legs in that comforting cage so she can feel soft and protected and covered as she lays back on the fluffy pillows below her. Catra looks down at her and the twinkle returns to grey-blue eyes, flickering in the soft amber of the string of Christmas lights. Adora’s lips are swollen from every bite and kiss, from smashing her mouth into every part of Catra’s body that she could have, and it compliments the rosey dust on her cheeks and the swollen redness of her eyes from her emotional response. She’s breathing hard, chest rising and falling as she pants through her parted lips.

_God, she’s fucking perfect_

Adora’s bashfulness returns and she doesn’t really know what to do with her hands, what Catra wants her to do with them, so the brunette woman grabs her hands and places them on her waist, skin connecting with skin making them both shiver, and her hands instantly tighten to pull her closer.

It feels so good, and Catra can’t remember the last time if ever, that she had a partner that really cared enough to touch her the way she wanted them to. She knew it wasn’t really fair to expect anything when her and Adora hadn’t really talked, but so many people had been afraid of touching her wrong and ended up not touching her at all. It was almost worse than being touched in a way she didn’t like, because at least that meant that her partner wasn’t afraid, wasn’t out of sorts when it came to touching. It made her feel beautiful, that Adora just had this _desire_ to touch her, to have her hands on her, and if she needed to be steered in the right direction a few times that was nothing compared to the feeling of not being wanted. It made her feel like her body was beautiful, like she was someone to be desired and loved instead of her body stopping someone from wanting her. 

And she’d wanted Adora for a while feeling like she might not want her back. 

But with Adora like this, crying at the sight of her and not being able to stop kissing her for even a second, it felt like she was finally with someone who really appreciated that she was the woman that she knew she was. 

She decides that Adora’s exploration was enough for now, because she’d been waiting to touch her girlfriend for the entire night, and her patience was wearing _very_ thin. She was content to coax Adora into giving in to herself and asking for what she’d wanted, but now it was go time because she’d had to see Adora in that flannel, rounded shoulders and biceps nearly tearing the sleeves while her veiny forearms were just out there exposed, all fucking day through work and the drive to campus.

She’d be hailed a saint, her patience unheard of and unparalleled.

But she could only feel Adora’s hands on her for so long without touching her back just as hard.

She leans down and connects their lips, pulling Adora’s bottom lip into her own with a gentleness that Adora really wasn’t expecting, but makes her whimper anyway. 

Because, while she wanted Adora to let go and give in to what she wanted, she knew that Adora needed something much softer, much more caring. She wanted to give that to her, to treat her like she was the most precious person in the world, a string of silk or a strand of spun sugar crystals. So she keeps kissing her with soft, languid drags of her lips against the blonde’s and feels her melt below her further into the mattress, her breathing evening into deep, needy breaths, that have Catra smiling into the kiss and she can feel Adora’s lips turning upward to smile back. Catra’s hands roam freely over Adora’s body, though she avoids her chest. It doesn’t take a genius to see that she isn’t very in touch with that part of her body, so she moves her hands to Adora’s sides when it's time to trail them up, avoiding her breasts and coming up to just below her armpit before circling to the front of her chest again.

Adora’s brain retreats into that hazy, clouded embrace, as she lets herself relax away from the anxiety of finally going this far, finally letting someone touch her intimately. Catra had seen through her fears and was lulling her into that very real place of security and safety with the motion of her hands. It doesn't go unnoticed by Adora that she doesn’t even need to tell her lover to avoid her breasts. It wasn’t really a secret, and they spent enough time together that she had to know something, though the blonde hadn’t shared with her what exactly the problem was. She still didn't really plan to, and tried to ignore that eventually she would have to confront the issue if they kept being intimate, if they went further.

Adora’s hands haven’t let go, but they have loosened and begun trailing up and down Catra’s torso, smooth skin warm beneath her fingers. Her finger tips are teasing along the edge of her bra, but she isn’t pushing to go any further. Catra peels herself up so she’s sitting up again and cups Adora’s cheek in her hand, staring into those drooping, hazy eyes that she loves so much, had loved for so long.

“You ok there sweetheart?” She asks.

Adora brings her hand up to hold Catra’s to her face and sighs, closing her eyes in a long blink before opening them again.

“Yeah,” She whispers out, sounding so small and timid.

It makes Catra _throb_ in her underwear and she bites her lip.

“What do you want, Adora?” She asks.

Adora shrugs, though Catra has a feeling it’s more because she doesn’t want to talk at all than she doesn’t know what she wants.

“Do you want to stop?” She asks.

“No,” Adora replies, continuing the motion of her hand up and down Catra’s side. She’ll occasionally stop to pinch her side, a mischievous glint in her eyes, and Catra can tell that whatever mood she’s in right now she’s absolutely fine to continue.

“You’ll tell me if you do though, right?” She asks, needing to make sure that Adora knew she didn’t have to be in this just for her if she didn’t want to continue.

“Ok,” Comes her sigh, but Catra needs her to pay a little more attention than that.

“Say it for me, baby,” She says, authoritative and soft at the same time in a tone that makes Adora shiver again, whimpering.

“I’ll tell you if I need to stop,” She says, voice cracking at the end accompanied by a squeeze that Catra hopes leaves finger shaped bruises on her hips.

Her smirk is almost predatory, and it makes Adora feel even more exposed and vulnerable in a way she didn’t know she wanted when she says, “That’s my good girl.”

Adora is so _beyond_ wet right now that her underwear is probably ruined but she can’t help the flood that hits her each and every time Catra is like this with her.

She just feels so privileged to be loved like this, to have Catra read her like a fucking book and treat her like she’s so special. She didn’t know she wanted, needed, this much softness and care until Catra started giving it to her and now it feels like she could suffocate without it. She feels warm and safe and it isn’t a feeling she’s ever really had before. She’d had friends who tried to make her feel as loved as she needed but she hadn’t ever had the chance to feel like she was someone’s entire world, at least not until now.

_She tricked me so hard and I’m not mad about it if she keeps talking to me like she couldn’t possibly love anyone more._

Catra leans back down to kiss her and the flames are fanned dramatically, and suddenly they’re back in that heated kiss with their roaming hands. Gasps and pants fill the room again and every so often Catra will think that Adora was just a little too quiet for a little too long and bite down on her bottom lip or her neck and get the most obscene whine she has ever heard another person make. 

Adora runs her hands up, palms spread, and cups the under sides of Catra’s breasts just under her bra and this time she finally asks for what she now knows Catra is making her ask for.

“Can I take this off?” She peeks out through her eyelashes and sees that Catra is lost in the feeling of Adora touching her and she nods.

“Yes, baby, please fucking take it off,” she groans out, and its only now that Adora notices the dampness on the front of Catra’s shorts, the way she’s grinding down onto her stomach, and she’s on fucking fire with how much she needs to make Catra feel good.

Adora sits herself up against the headboard so she isn’t laying down anymore and stares into Catra’s eyes as she reaches around and unhooks her bra, pulling it away to reveal a pair of breasts that Adora swears are the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen.

She doesn’t waste any time and leans forward, but before she does anything more she asks, “Can I touch them? I… I know they can be sensitive sometimes and-”

“Touch them how you want, princess,” Catra interrupts her and moves a hand to the back of her head to card her fingers into blonde locks. She pulls Adora’s head forward, knowing what she really wants, and gasps, grinding her hips against Adora’s stomach again when she feels lips close around her nipple.

It’s _astounding_ what Adora is capable of doing with her tongue, and the feeling of the lips and tongue against her while one hand comes up to cup her other breast is almost enough to destroy her as she loses herself to the feeling of Adora absolutely worshipping her.

Adora can’t hear anything but Catra’s gasps and groans; can’t feel anything but her skin beneath her hands and her pulse hammering beneath that soft skin; can’t smell anything but the salty tint of sweat through her lavender scented soap. Adora is just _gone_ and all that is left of her is the part that is fused with Catra’s very cells as she uses her mouth and hands to bring her lover the pleasure she so desperately longs to give her. She strokes and bites, licks and squeezes and Catra becomes putty in her hands though she somehow still just always knows that Adora needs her to be strong and sturdy for her. 

Adora wants to give her everything, make her feel pleasure and satisfaction and love. 

So she moves a hand down along Catra’s stomach, the soft skin there giving easily under her fingers and stops when she reaches the waistband of her shorts. She feels Catra shiver and runs her fingers horizontally, pushing her fingers just under the lace of her underwear and she stops moving down, but continues stroking. Side to side her knuckles rub against her stomach.

“Can I?” She trails off, hoping Catra would fill in the blanks for her.

“Can you what, princess?” She hears Catra say.

She groans and rolls her eyes, but feels Catra pinch her shoulder like she knows the attitude she’s receiving and she looks up into her eyes to look at her properly.

“Can I touch you?” She asks.

Apparently it’s still not what Catra wants to hear because the smirk she gets nearly annihilates her.

“Can you touch me, what?” Her tone is breathy and a little mocking now and Adora at once wants to be good for her and ask, and find out what happens if she isn’t good, if she pushes back.

“Can I touch you please?” She grinds out, pushing her hips up to tease Catra back.

She just chuckles and says, “Yeah baby girl, you can touch me.”

Catra’s _drunk_ with the power she has, the control she has, the way Adora just gives it to her. The blonde was afloat in a sea of raw emotion and the only thing tethering her to reality was Catra’s presence, steady and commanding. It makes Catra feel even more special that Adora put so much faith, so much trust in her.

Adora doesn’t say anything about the teasing because she finally gets what she wants, and runs her hand under Catra’s underwear to touch her properly.

She strokes her fingers slowly along her length and decides now is as good a time as any, probably the best time actually, to talk about it.

“So what do you call this little lady right here?” She asks, and appreciates the snort Catra gives her, knowing that if she gets her to laugh she’s done something right.

“‘Little lady’? What are you a cowboy?” She says. The way Adora asked, the way she stroked her gently and asked her that question instead of assuming is everything she wishes she got from partners before.

“You’ve yee’d your last haw pardner,” Is Adora’s response, and it has Catra cackling.

_Fuck me I didn’t know sex was supposed to be this fun_

“It changes. Sometimes I… I call it my ‘clit,’ and sometimes I don’t call it anything. It really just depends how I feel,” She responds, thinking for a second before saying, “I guess ‘clit’ is anatomically more accurate but sometimes it feels strange.” 

Adora nods, continuing her stroking, running her thumb along the underside up and down.

“What do you think today?” 

“My clit,” She whispers, like she’s saying something weird or dirty.

Adora doesn’t make her feel that way, doesn’t make her feel like she’s wrong or gross or anything just because of her body, but it's still instinct to whisper the response like she has something to hide. However, the way Adora talks to her now, the way she looks at her, makes her think that maybe she didn’t need to hide for so long. Maybe she just needed the right partner.

It turns out that Adora is the right partner, apparently.

Adora keeps kissing her neck, open mouthed kisses, firm wet pecks, and bites that drive her crazy while she shifts from rubbing the sides to cupping her in her hand and rubbing the underside with her thumb. She continues her stroking, teasing and building while Catra holds her close and jogs her hips against her hand. Adora takes a chance to try something and shifts her knee up to help Catra ride against her, making contact with the space under her and stimulating her more.

It’s insane, the throbbing she feels, the heat and need she has as she unconsciously moves her hips in time with Adora’s gentle, light strokes.

It’s almost enough, just shy of enough, and while the precum she’d leaked out was enough to help Adora glide along her soft clit she feels her entire body go rigid when those same fingers release her and she pulls back to watch as Adora looks her in the eye and takes her fingers into her mouth, sucking them in and running her tongue around them.

Catra just watches, overtaken by desire and need as Adora fucks her own mouth slowly with her fingers, thrusting them in and out agonizingly slowly.

When she thinks her fingers are wet enough, or she thinks she’s spent enough time with her hand in her mouth and wants to get it back into Catra’s pants, she withdraws her hand and moves back down to enter her underwear again. She holds Catra’s clit against her and uses her wet fingers to rub up and down the underside, swirling over the head and back down again. 

It feels like torture, to be so close and have Adora be so perfect but not to have cum yet, and she risks something she isn’t sure if Adora is ready for.

“Can I do something?” She asks, and Adora looks at her with an eyebrow raised.

“Of course,” She responds.

Catra snakes her hand down and reaches behind the flesh that hangs there to push her fingers against her sensitive skin, feeling for the rings hidden there and pushing her fingers up until she feels them pushing past and into the canals.

She places her other hand on Adora’s abdomen, feeling the rigid muscles, just above her own pants. She drags her nails down, scratching five red lines into the skin and making Adora shiver.

“Can I touch you too baby?”

Adora nods quickly and her eyes snap shut, fingers faltering for just a moment on Catra’s clit when she feels a smaller hand reach her own. 

Catra teases up and down Adora’s soaked slit, shuddering at how wet she is for her, before bringing her hand up to rub circles on her clit with two fingers.

She chuckles, a dark edge to her voice, “All this for me princess?”

Adora _chokes_

It’s everything she had ever wanted. 

If this was the only way they ever touched each other for the rest of their lives, Adora would die the happiest she was capable of being. Catra’s hands on her, fingers rubbing her like that in a smooth and quick rhythm combined with the visual of Catra fucking herself while Adora’s hand rubs her as well is quickly bringing her closer to her release.

It’s embarrassingly fast, she thinks for a second, before she realizes that it doesn’t matter and she doesn’t care, as long as Catra keeps touching her and she gets to keep touching Catra.

“Fuck baby girl you’re so good for me, just keep rubbing my clit like that,” She pants out, letting Adora watch in awe as she rubs her fingers over the head and Catra fucks herself while tightening and speeding up her circles on Adora’s clit.

Adora rubs faster, leaning forward and whispering in her ear, “You’re so fucking beautiful kitten, I love you so much.”

It’s all Catra needs to come, leaking out over Adora’s hand and into her underwear as she pulses and throbs in both of their hands. She lets her head rest against Adora’s shoulder, while she moves her hips forward and back in short little motions to ride out the rest of her orgasm. She rubs Adora’s clit harder, pressing a little more firmly as she feels Adora’s pulse beneath her fingers. She keeps up that same motion, rocking her hips forward and back while she keeps up the rubbing of her fingers on wet and silky flesh, the softest thing she’s ever felt, and she too leans forward to breath praise into her partner’s ear.

“That’s a good girl baby. What do you want?” She asks.

 _That’s not fucking fair at all_ Adora thinks to herself, and manages to stutter out half of a coherent thought.

“I want… ah… need to…”

Catra takes pity on her and decides that, yeah ok maybe it wasn’t fair to ask when she’s like this.

“Do you want to come for me princess?”

Adora nods frantically, and Catra smirks that her question was exactly what Adora was waiting for.

“Then come for me sweet girl. Be good for me and come,” She whispers as she licks along the shell of Adora’s ear, taking it in her mouth to bite down.

Adora comes with a sob, shaking and holding Catra close to her.

They stay there, motionless, and drink in the sight of each other. 

Adora looks at Catra’s eyes blown wide with cum on the part of her hand she can see from where it still rests below her waistband.

Catra stares at Adora’s flushed skin with her hand still hidden below her underwear.

She’s worried about a lot of things; if Adora saw her hand, if she even knew what she was doing, if she wanted to do it herself, if she was grossed out by it. All she sees is unparalleled, unadulterated love and adoration in her partners eyes.

“I love you,” Adora repeats, leaning forward to peck a kiss to her lips.

Her eyes are alight with curiosity and she knows she’s got a question, but she’s too nervous to be the one to bring it up.

“I love you too baby.”

She kisses her once more, and Catra shoots her a sideways smile, “What’s on your mind sweetheart?”

Adora’s blush returns, not like she’d just given her an orgasm for the books, one for the ages really, and waits patiently for her to collect her thoughts.

“I… god I don’t know how to ask this but like… I read about what you just did in a book and I wanted to know if I could try it some time?” 

Catra is absolutely stunned.

_A book? She read a book?_

She bursts out laughing. 

“You read a book for me?” 

Adora’s face looks like it erupted in flames. 

“Well...yeah! I wanted to see what you’d like and I know we should really talk about it but I didn’t want to mess something up so I got an ebook? It was just to study some things! I wasn’t going to like, use it like it was the bible or anything. I just thought it might be nice to know a few things before I went in all cocky acting like I knew shit when I didn't.” She’s so nervous again, and Catra can’t fathom what she thinks she has to be nervous about when Catra’s the one with the anatomy that no one ever knows what to do with, but she doesn’t want to fuel her embarrassment just yet. 

“Ok so we're going to have a talk about both of our limits, and then we can look over this book and test out what you've learned,” Catra responds, using a finger to brush a stray lock of hair out of Adora’s bright eyes. 

It really is incredibly sweet, how she’s so geared up to learn about how to please her, learn what she would like and wouldn’t like in bed. 

Adora turns over and reaches for something under her bed and in her excitement she nearly throws Catra off of her, in spite of the fact that one of her hands is still sitting in Catra’s underwear covered in cum. 

“Hey woah! Don’t toss me on the floor, jesus. Maybe we should get cleaned up before you start a wrestling match?” She laughs out. 

“Oh, sorry! I just… I have it under my bed and I got excited.” 

That makes Catra tilt her head to the side, “Under your bed? I thought you had an ebook?” 

“Well it was an ebook… Until I printed it.” 

“Why would you print an ebook?” 

“How else am I supposed to highlight it?" 

Catra stares at her, eyes wide and mouth open, because she really doesn’t know what to say to that. 

_She’s such a fucking nerd. Holy shit how did I fall in love with an absolute dork?_

The real question is, how could she not? 

They get up and try to be quiet so as not to wake Bow and Glimmer as they creep to the bathroom, grabbing wash cloths to clean themselves up, to clean each other up, and returning to Adora's room so they can both change underwear and get in bed. 

Adora lays on her back and opens her arms in an invitation, one Catra gladly takes as she folds herself into her side. 

They wind themselves together, folding limbs until they’re one. 

For this moment, laying in the comfort of Adora’s home, wrapped in each other’s arms, they’re the most at peace they’ve ever been. They’re the most loved they’ve ever felt. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm lowkey nervous to post this chapter because I don't know anything about anything, so I hope it's good!


	7. Hand under my sweatshirt, baby kiss it better/ She would have made such a lovely bride, what a shame she's fucked in the head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: This is the chapter where shit hits the fan
> 
> This is as angsty as it is going to get, but some issues are coming to a head with the way Adora sees herself and treats herself.
> 
> This is where we talk about the:  
> Implied/referenced self harm in the form of unsafe binding  
> Implied/referenced child abuse  
> dysphoria  
> gender dysphoria  
> self worth issues  
> anxiety  
> panic attacks  
> past abuse  
> mildly graphic talks about blood and injury

Catra pulls Adora’s sweater tighter around herself as she watches the red block numbers on the LCD display continue their countdown, letting herself zone out for the remaining minute and a half that the gallon would be in the shaker. She plays absentmindedly with a fraying seam along the cuff and takes in the comforting yet faint aroma that was distinctly Adora. The customer she was working with had disappeared down an aisle to grab a few roller covers, and she’s blessed with a silence that is greatly appreciated from the aching in her head. Once the gallon is out of the shaker she sets it on the desk and retreats down an aisle, the towering shelving units providing some sort of barrier against the elements. The paint desk was right next to the front door, which meant that her sinuses fell victim to the intense dry heat coming from the overhead heaters only to be blown away by a gust of frigid winter air every time the door opened. It left her in a state of sweating and shivering that fueled her exhaustion. The only good thing about it was that the heat helped loosen some of the stiffness in her hip.

Her shift is about halfway over, and she’d returned from her lunch break just a half hour ago in a less than stellar mood. She’d been growing more and more worried about her girlfriend the more her eyes were opened to Adora’s behavior. The text she’d gotten during the first half of her shift soured her already lackluster disposition. 

_Adora: Hey, go ahead to lunch without me. I’m going to work through because we’re understaffed._

_Catra: They’re making you work through lunch?_

_Adora: Well no they told me I didn’t have to. I’m just not really hungry and think I’d rather have that extra hour of pay. I’ll eat when we get home!_

Things like this have been happening more and more often. The extra hours at work were the first red flag, but not even the biggest in a long list of them that revealed more and more to Catra just how deeply Adora’s self worth issues ran. She knew why Adora was like this, why she acted like she was fine when she wasn’t and why she clearly didn’t think her problems were worth addressing. Catra had been spending every day since they got together trying to chase those thoughts away and while it was successful in the moment she didn’t know how to help Adora beyond that. She was filled with a deep sense of dread as she unearthed more and more of the coping mechanisms Adora had come up with to deal with the way she had been feeling for what she could only assume was her entire life.

Between work, class, and soccer, she was on the way to becoming burnt out beyond repair and it scared Catra more than anything else had. She’d schedule every moment of her day down to the minute and Catra realized that Adora didn’t have time for anything other than her commitments. She’d tried to talk to her about her hobbies and interests, things she did that she enjoyed, but Adora shied away from the conversation like it was the plague. Adora didn’t even take time for herself, and the realization of just how much of herself she was giving away without any regard for her health was deeply unsettling. The number of times Catra returned to the apartment to sleep alone because Adora decided she was taking the offer of an overnight stocking shift was far too high. Her heavy course load was the only thing stopping it most of the time, but when the semester ended and she was bumped up to full time hours while she took her online winter classes it would continue to be a problem.

All she knows is that the bags that were ever present under Adora’s eyes in at least some capacity are the worst she’s ever seen. She was practically falling over herself as she got dressed for work, exhaustion making her dizzy. She’d fallen asleep on the ride in, and Catra just let her snooze in the passenger seat, jolting herself awake and wincing when she realized she’d nodded off. Catra kept her eyes trained on the road, gripping Adora’s hand in hers and the steering wheel with the other. The truth was that she hadn’t gotten much sleep either, because she could feel Adora coughing, tossing, and turning in bed next to her all night. While she’d reached out a hand more than once to grip her arm in a way she hoped was comforting, and it calmed her girlfriend for a few moments, it wasn’t long before she was restless and uncomfortable again. 

What was scarier than the packed schedule and the sleepless nights was that the cough she normally tried to hide had turned into a deep wheeze. Catra doesn’t know how much longer she can ask her if she’s ok just to get a lie back, without bringing up that interrupting her sleep and making her sick made it a clear problem. She had slept next to Adora with their bodies pressed close often enough to know that her girlfriend no longer took her sports bra off when she went to bed. She’d taken it off the first few times that they’d slept next to each other but she’d always curl in on herself. When she realized what it felt like to intertwine herself with her girlfriend, she’d taken to keeping it on. Whether it was because she didn’t want to feel her breasts herself, because she didn’t want Catra to feel them, or a combination of the two, was still something Catra hadn’t yet figured out. It had to be the same reason she always kept her shirt on when they made love to each other, but she’d never wanted to push enough to ask before. She didn’t really understand the connection, just that there was one. Catra wasn’t a stranger to the way a sports bra, depending on the fit, could either help back pain or make it worse, but she had never personally felt like it affected her breathing. Whatever the real situation was, the entire thing was delicate, and confronting it before Adora was ready to take that step could damage what they had between them. Their connection wasn’t fragile by any means, but Catra wanted to avoid doing something that would hurt Adora at all costs. If it was gender related, she wanted to give Adora the chance to control her own coming out. She knew how it felt to have that control ripped away from you and she didn’t want Adora to have a single thing pressuring her if she could avoid it.

She was impatient, and in an attempt not to have that be a detriment to the situation it took all of her self control not to bring it up. Someone doesn’t get better, no matter how much you wanted them to, if they didn’t see that they were hurting. They also didn’t get better if they didn’t think they deserved it. Whatever had happened, whatever Weaver had been telling her for years after Catra had to leave, was enough to make her think she just wasn’t worth getting better. Catra had been trying her hardest to fight those demons for her, but the longer this went on the more she realized that Adora needed more.

She feels tears sting at her eyes when she sees Adora walking by to fill up her water bottle at the cooler behind the service desk and she can’t even _look_ at Catra. That was new, because she’d give her a goofy smile and a wave every time she walked by, and not even bringing herself to look at her girlfriend was a sign that she knew that Catra was noticing all of the things she kept hidden behind those walls that she’d put up a long time ago. And while Adora wouldn’t look at Catra, that didn’t mean Catra couldn’t see her anyway; see her hands shaking while she screwed the cap back on the bottle or the way her shoulders were hunched and she was almost bent over. Catra noticed that Adora was still wearing her sweatshirt and her coat over her apron, and she normally ran way too hot to wear either layer when she was at work.

Catra saw how tired, how exhausted she was.

Catra saw how much pain she was in.

Catra saw how _sad_ she was.

That was the most painful part to witness; the way that Adora would just stare at the ceiling, or look at herself in the mirror, or gaze with eyes unfocused while she thumbed the corner of a page in her textbook. Her mouth would pull down into a frown, the deep kind that pulled the corners of her lips further and further toward her chin. She’d just sit there silently, deflating further as she grew more and more out of it. Catra could practically feel the way Adora would shrink into herself, withdrawing to protect herself from the world around her, to protect herself from her own emotions.

That was to say, Adora was dissociating hard core, and Catra knew exactly how that felt. She couldn’t even stop it from happening to herself on her worst dysphoria days, and knew that there was less she could do to alleviate the feeling when it came to the complex tapestry of trauma that wove itself through her girlfriend. Adora wasn’t doing anything to help herself, but maybe that was because she didn’t know how. She’d been forced to take the lessons she learned growing up and combined them with the dangerous coping mechanisms she’d taught herself. This is where she ended up; a person afraid and in pain with a desire beyond words to be good enough.

Adora wouldn’t ever think she was good enough, because she didn’t know that she already was. 

Catra hadn’t wanted to be the one to force Adora into giving away more than she was already willing to, but the situation had evolved. It had taken a dangerous turn and she feared how much further it would go before Adora would even say anything. Something had to change, and she wasn’t going to wait around for Adora to come to her about these issues because she knew that Adora planned on suppressing all of them for as long as she could. She needed a nudge in the right direction, because it was clear that she didn’t know how to start helping herself.

Normally Catra didn’t claim to know what the right direction was, having been self destructive and downright manipulative at times in her past. She had been an angry person and tried her best to hurt those around her and herself so she wouldn’t have to deal with the root of the problems. After the incident she didn’t trust a single other person, even those that proved themselves to be trustworthy. She liked to think she was better now, a better person who knew that she used to be toxic to be around, but she only learned that through working on herself. She only learned that because she finally, skeptically, sought help.

With that, Catra turns to her supervisor and asks to leave early, because she knows what she has to do. She’ll be back in time to pick Adora up from her shift and she’ll be none the wiser. She plans on taking her home, feeding her a real, decent meal, and putting her to bed so she can start to catch up on the rest she had been denying herself. Then tomorrow, she’d convince her to call out of work and skip her practice so she can relax. It wouldn’t be hard to give an excuse because there were plenty. Finals were the following week and she needed to study, and she was legitimately sick if she wanted to go that route for her explanation. She knew that once Adora allowed herself to start getting the rest she needed, once the floodgates were opened, the exhaustion barreling through wouldn’t stop until she’d recovered almost entirely.

_She gave me access to her google calendar. If she thought I wouldn't notice that all of the practices after the season ended were labelled 'optional' by her coach, she is drastically mistaken. I have seen every episode of Case Closed, and there is no mystery I cannot solve._

She pulls out of the parking lot and heads in the direction of the grocery store to pick up a few things before going to Adora’s apartment to start dinner. She goes for the slow cooker because there were still a few hours before she would have to go back to pick her up, and she wanted to spend that time cleaning. She’d seen ‘clean’ on Adora’s schedule for tonight, and there was no way she was going to let her girlfriend walk around in pain all day just to do _more_ work when she got home. The apartment’s three official tenants had stopped her every time they saw her trying to help clean, but personally she thought that spending over half of her nights here pushed her far past just being a regular guest, and none of them were here to stop her. 

_If I'm not going to break in, clean her apartment, and make dinner for my hot silly girlfriend, then what is the point of me having a key?_

She had to make Adora realize, one way or another, that she was worth far more than what she could give to other people.

And even _if_ she was only worth that much? It didn’t matter. Because she gave Catra everything. So she deserved everything back.

***

The morning sun is starting to peek through the shades, dramatic angle and soft edges betraying how early it must be. It takes her a moment to gather her thoughts, to wake up fully in the soft mattress and warm blankets. Her plan had partially worked, being that Adora didn’t fight the urge to eat the dinner she made for her, snuggle up with the unicorn squishmallow she had thrust into her arms upon entering the bedroom, and went to sleep without trying to help clean or study. Her lack of fight when she would ordinarily have protested was concerning as well, and gave away just how tired she was. Catra hadn’t brought up the rest of her plan, because it was clear that it would just be too much for her to process that evening. Instead she had waited until Adora fell asleep against her, clutching the stuffed animal to her chest and snuggling her head into Catra’s neck. She took her phone, _which she gave me the password to, by the way,_ and there were now three drafts waiting in Adora’s email. All she had to do was read over them and send them.

One to her coach.

One to her supervisor.

One to the campus counseling center.

Concern grips her when she hears the gasping and coughing next to her. She turns over to face Adora, and is met with the sight of her sitting up, clutching a hand to her chest and trying desperately to breathe. 

She sits up, kneeling next to her and rubbing her back.

“Hey, hey Adora? It’s ok, alright? Just breathe for me,” Catra tries, hoping to get her to calm down. The coughing doesn’t stop, still shaking her violently, but her breathing gets slightly more regular while the motion and soothing voice ground her. She’s adrift in a fog of pain and fear, floating in that space between earth and hell, where she can feel her soul start to catch fire and her nerves go cold. Dread settles in her stomach as she realizes that she’s been caught, a secret she’d been keeping for over a year was being revealed and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Catra just keeps rubbing her back, fighting away the remnants of sleep as she tries to piece together what is wrong. Then she feels it. Her hand pauses it’s motion, and the color drains from her face when she feels what she can only assume is at least one, but most likely two, _very_ tight bras cutting into Adora’s back. It’s the first time she feels the way they indent the skin around it, and she’s nauseated that she’d never noticed it before.

“Adora? Is it your bra? Is it too tight?” She asks, her hand coming up to cup Adora’s chin and turn her head slightly to look at her. What she sees just makes her so sad and her heart pulls at the look of desperation. Adora’s eyes are so full of shame, and a tear runs down her face. She looks like she could break apart, was breaking apart this very moment, from the weight of all of her insecurities and fears compounding into a morning when she woke up unable to breathe and couldn’t ignore them anymore. She squeezes her eyes shut, a sob wracking her frame, and nods.

“Yeah I... I didn’t take them off last night. I couldn’t make myself take them off,” She finally whispers, voice full of absolute despair. Another stab sears through Catra’s heart.

“Do you want me to go while you change?” Catra asks, hoping she doesn't say yes. She doesn't know if Adora is in any condition to change by herself and she just wants more than anything to make sure she’s ok.

“I don’t want you to see but… I don’t think I can do it myself,” Her broken whisper cracks Catra’s heart further. 

Catra can sense the hesitation, the fear and uncertainty of having to lay yourself bare far before you’re ready. It was exactly how she felt that day they met at work. The control of coming out was ripped away from her and she just had to trust and hope that Adora wouldn’t hurt her for it. How ashamed Adora looks, how desperately she’s trying to get control of her wheezing and sobbing, is all of that weight crashing down on her at once. She realizes that the powerlessness she feels right now, seeing the person she loves suffering in front of her, is probably the same way Adora felt when she saw the terror on her face that day, and again when she spent the night for the first time.

She’s going to take care of her, the same way Adora did for her on her birthday when she was delirious from the pain she couldn’t hide anymore.

“Hey, look at me. It’s ok, remember? You’re safe with me. I won’t ever do anything to hurt you. We’ll deal with how you feel now, and we’ll talk about it later,” She says, smiling what she hopes is a comforting smile and tenderly beginning the motion of her hand up and down the muscular back that was still shaking below her finger tips.

Adora can tell she means it, and nods.

Catra tugs gently at her shirt to start removing it slowly, giving her plenty of opportunities to change her mind and stop her. She has to squeeze her eyes shut when she gets it off and sees what Adora had been hiding from her, what she had been hiding from everyone. How long had she been doing this to herself? The sores are old, scaring around the edges in an almost white ring, but tinted pink in raw irritation. They’re scabbed over but tossing and turning at night had cracked a few of them open to seep blood onto _both_ of the bras she wore. They’re the worst on her shoulders, but there are spots between her shoulder blades and along her ribs where the straps cut into her that are on the verge of breaking skin themselves. There’s bruising along her ribs, and she hopes desperately that it hasn’t gotten so bad that Adora was hiding dislocated ribs from her. The blonde’s breathing speeds up in panic so she decides it’s time to take a break, that this was a delicate process and it wouldn’t do her partner any good to rush through it. She threads her fingers through Adora’s hair and guides her head to her chest so she can pepper kisses on her forehead while her thumbs stroke along her temples. 

Once Adora has calmed a little more, she helps her sit up the rest of the way and begins to peel the _first_ bra off of her. Working the material is a fight, and she can’t even really imagine how Adora got it on in the first place when it is at least one size too small. As soon as it is off, the coughing resumes, but Adora can clearly breathe better already. It’s a deep wheeze, like if she stops focusing on breathing her lungs will stop taking in air all together. She sits back and gives her a moment to get ready for the last big push, knowing that this last step is going to be the hardest. Whatever her reasons, and Catra had a pretty good idea what those were, it was clear that being bare wasn’t something the blonde was interested in.

“Baby? You doing ok?”

“Can I just… Can I please leave it on?” Her voice is a high whine, and she’s succumbing more and more to the numbness that washes over her. It’s like she’s far away, like her brain is zoomed out and she knows she is talking but she can’t feel anything. She isn’t sure she wants to.

“Sweetheart I know you don’t want to, but you need to. This isn’t healthy. You’re hurt and I know it’s going to suck but we need to get it off of you.”

She sighs and nods, knowing that they are the cause of her back pain and breathing problems. She just feels so dumb for letting it bother her this much, for drawing this much attention to a problem she doesn’t even really deserve to have. And now Catra has to take care of her when she had real dysphoria, and a real reason for being in pain. The guilt was heavy, it was destroying her from the inside out and if a fissure opened up through the center of the earth and dragged her directly to hell itself she wouldn’t even put up a fight. Her problems with her body weren’t something she was ready to talk about, and it terrified her that Catra would want to talk about it, would ask her to talk about all of the stupid issues she should have been able to get over. Tears stream down her face at the humiliation of it, that she couldn’t even stop herself from ruining this one thing she was finally starting to think she deserved.

Catra’s parents had been right about her all along, and she dreaded the day that her girlfriend realized that for herself.

Catra keeps whispering words of love and reassurance to her as she peels off that final bra, two sizes too small and cutting into her skin so deeply that it leaves a bruised red outline in its wake.

_”I’ve got you baby”_

She works her fingers under the seam, peeling it away from her ribs.

_”I love you”_

She works it up and over her breasts to rest near her collar bone.

_”You’re doing so well for me, sweetheart”_

One arm is through.

_”That’s it”_

The other arm is released.

_”Almost there, baby, we’re almost done”_

She works it over her head, mindful not to pull any of her hair or jerk her neck.

_”There we go, that’s it”_

And it's off.

It takes all of her willpower to keep her own tears at bay through the process, knowing that seeing how much it upset her would just make Adora feel worse.

“Baby do you have a first aid kit so I can clean you up a little?”

“Under the bathroom sink,” She says quietly, exhaustion slurring her words. Her eyes are drooping back shut and Catra can tell she doesn’t have long before she’s back asleep, body relaxing from the suffocating grip the bras had on her chest.

She pulls the blanket that pooled at Adora’s hips up so she can hold it to her chest, covering the part of herself she clearly didn’t want on display, and makes her way out to the bathroom between their bedrooms. It’s early still, and she doesn’t expect to hear Bow and Glimmer whispering in their room as she pries open the cabinet to rummage through for the first aid kit. She knows she isn’t supposed to hear what she does, and she tries not to focus on the voices, but her girlfriend’s name draws her attention anyway.

“I just wish Adora would let us help her. I talked to my mom about it, and she doesn’t want me to push her if she doesn’t want help, but I just don’t know how much longer she can keep up with all of this when the pressure is hurting her so much,” Glimmer says.

Catra frowns, considering that this isn’t even the surface of what Adora is dealing with. She knew that, but the reminder when she was just trying to focus on helping her right now in the moment, was stifling. 

“I know, but you know how she is. Your parents and my dads have more than enough money to buy groceries for her too, but she just doesn’t want to feel like she’s taking advantage of us,” Bow replies.

_Fuck_ Catra swears to herself.

“It’s that awful woman’s fault, for making her think she didn’t deserve help and kindness for so long. God help her if I ever see her,” Glimmer’s voice takes a dark, angry edge.

Bow sighs, “I know Glimmy, but you can’t just undo years of being told you’re not worth anyone’s help. I wish we could, but we’ll just have to be there for her when she needs it.”

Catra’s blood runs cold, heart pounding in her ears. She knows who they’re talking about, exactly who that ‘awful woman’ was. When they were kids, Weaver had always liked Adora more than her and it was resentment that kept her from realizing just how bad Adora had it. That was something that had taken her years to realize. When she finally had, she’d snapped awake one morning and cried for hours at the idea that Adora was just as tortured, just as abused, but in completely different ways with completely different methods of manipulation. A few short years ago while she was safe with her parents, Adora was still suffering under her thumb in the same way she always had. It was easy to see that Weaver’s vile, viscous words had left Adora with scars that still bled, intrusive thoughts that suffocated her and pulled her into a vacuum of darkness. Not to mention the physical scars she would always have from her. She was there in her head on even her best days.

She knew Adora’s need to excel, to prove that she was worth something, was a toxic inner monologue that left her bruised and battered. She also knew from the years that she lived with Weaver herself that the inner monologue wasn’t always in your own voice, but it was in _hers_ sometimes too. The way Adora talked to her the night that she drove her home for the first time and they finally talked, she realizes that Adora didn’t just think she’d said something wrong, she was terrified that she had. She thought she was going to ruin it, ruin everything, and was placing the responsibility of reconnecting solely on herself. All she wanted to do was fix this, undo the hurt and make the person she loves feel like she was worth kindness, that she deserved it. 

Years of torment and abuse, being made to feel lesser, being made to feel like your only worth came from what you could do for others, wasn’t something she could get Adora out of. It would be a process, it would take patience and understanding and love. Catra didn’t need to fix Adora, she needed to be there for her while she helped herself. She would be there, handing her needles and thread as she stitched herself back together. She would be there for her bad days to cherish and comfort her. She would share her good days and make sure she knew that she deserved them.

She stands with the first aid kit in her hand and has to cover her mouth to hold back the sob that comes out when she sees the balled up wad of duct tape in the bathroom trash can. 

_I am going to love her, and prove to her that she deserves every bit of it, if its the last fucking thing I do before I leave this earth._

_We are going to deal with this now, and then get her the help she needs._

When she returns, Adora is sitting up in the same position as when she left, except her face is resting in her hands and her arms are propped up on her knees. She’s clearly trying not to fall asleep sitting up, and Catra sets to work quickly cleaning the sores and prodding at her sides to make sure she doesn’t need to drive her to the doctor.

A pained whimper reaches her ears and she leans down to place a kiss on her shoulder, “I know sweetheart but you’re doing so well for me and I’m almost finished, ok?”

“...’k,” Her voice is so small, so vulnerable, and if the circumstances were different she would think it was the cutest thing she’d ever heard.

_Ok, that was kind of the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard._

“What kind of shirt do you want?” She says after she packs up the kit and walks over to the closet.

“Flannel?” She hears behind her.

She picks one out and puts it on Adora, buttoning it up and helping her lay down. She pulls the quilt up to her chin and kisses her from her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, and then the tip, before planting a firm kiss on her lips. Her hands come up to cup her flushed cheeks and she rubs her fingers over them, tickling at her hair line.The action makes Adora giggle, the sound coming out thick with sleep, and she can feel the mood lightening. She climbs in with her and pulls her over so that the blonde is laying across her chest with her head resting in the crook of her neck, grabbing the stuffed unicorn and handing it to Adora to hold close to herself. She sees her muscles flex as she squeezes it and her fingers grip the fabric tight before relaxing. It’s the first time Adora has laid down in this bed and given herself willingly to sleep in quite a while, and she lets herself absorb how nice it feels to be held, to be loved like this. For once, perhaps through force of will and perhaps through sheer exhaustion, she lets her troubles slip away and absorbs what it feels like to have someone take care of her.

Catra holds her tight and whispers praise and assurance in her ear, and she lets herself melt into the feeling of being held. Her eyes flutter shut and she doesn’t have a single urge to reopen them while she is blanketed in this hazy, sleepy feeling. 

***

Adora sits cross-legged on the living room couch with a cup of tea clutched in her shaky grip. Catra had handed it to her both to help soothe her, and to occupy her hands when she noticed she’d been picking at the skin around her nails. Drumming her fingers along the ceramic she feels the smooth, glazed ridges below the pads of her fore and middle fingers. Her ring finger catches on the rough porousness of the spot where the side chipped against another mug in the dishwasher. The change in texture is a difference that would ordinarily bother her enough to not even use this mug, never having chosen it for herself. The feeling of a nail running against that one spot when she did the dishes put her nerve endings on high alert every time. However this time it becomes a welcome way to occupy her hand’s need to jitter and move. She tries not to focus on the anxiety of being in a room full of people without binding her chest, something she hasn’t done in a long time. She keeps her eyes trained at the floor, avoiding their gazes for as long as she can. Instead she’s focusing on the soothing scent of the candle in the corner that Catra lit after guiding her to the couch, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. She’d mentioned a while ago that the lavender one smelled just like Catra’s shampoo, and she’d obviously chosen it to try to calm her.

It seemed that Catra knew how difficult this conversation would be, having had a very similar one herself on several occasions before, and wanted to surround Adora in her presence and comfort. It makes her feel like, even though she was the one who did something wrong and this was clearly an intervention or lecture of some kind, Catra knew how to make her feel taken care of. Regardless of the conversation to come, and how much this situation was all her fault, Catra thought she deserved at least a little bit of comfort.

She grew up being told that she needed to be better, that responsibility fell to her because others were lesser. It was a way of thinking that Ms. Weaver had tried to instill in her when she was young, especially when she befriended Catra. The woman didn’t take kindly to being disappointed, but Adora disappointed her most of the time in one way or another in spite of her best efforts. Her will was law, and Adora would learn quickly that if she had any sense of self preservation she would match her will to Ms. Weaver’s. The scar on her forearm resulted from a _discussion_ they had one day when Adora made one too many mistakes. Adora didn’t often fail so colossally that Ms. Weaver saw physical punishment to be the only option, but on the occasions that she did it was something she wouldn’t ever forget. She’d tried to learn her lessons, she really had, but she just couldn’t stop messing things up.

The other problem was that Adora’s will all along; in the recesses of her mind where no one else was allowed to infiltrate, was to be told what to do. She wanted someone to take charge of her for even just a moment and tell her to do something that was in her own best interests because they cared about her. Ms. Weaver told her what to do, but everything she tried to make of her disregarded Adora’s well being in every way. She didn’t care, and she never had.

Bow and Glimmer and each of their parents had suggestions, and would tell her that, respectfully, they thought she should do something. But she needed more. She needed it to be firmer, like she didn’t have the option not to because it was what was best for her. She wanted to give control to someone and let them help her when she didn’t know how to help herself. She wanted to feel small and weak, for no other reason than because it was _ok_ to do so.

She wanted it to be Catra, and she had a feeling that Catra wanted it to be herself too.

She tries to take deep, calming breaths, but they come out short anyway because her lungs don’t really remember how. After this last year of constricting her chest’s ability to move she’s left with the muscle memory of short gasps and hyperventilation. It’s the first time she really notices how much it’s affected her health, how bad it has been for her. It was easy to ignore when she kept busy and didn’t let anyone else see, but now that they were about to have a very painful conversation about just what exactly she’d been doing to herself, she couldn’t help but think of it.

After they’d calmed down Adora had fallen asleep, snoring in her deep state of unconsciousness as her body took advantage of the rest it was allowed. Just another thing that made it so obvious to her that she should have done something about this long before now. She’d known for a while that it was bad for her, that it wasn’t healthy and that it was eventually going to cause her permanent problems. The issue was that it hadn’t affected anyone else. That changed when she’d woken Catra up this morning, and again when she’d woken up sprawled on top of her girlfriend and looked up to see that she was awake with bags under her pink tinted eyes.

She hadn’t set out to hurt herself but she wasn’t naive either. There was a risk that she had calculated, a risk she knew she was taking and decided firmly that hurting herself wasn’t a part of the equation that mattered. It wasn’t something she cared if she did or not. But hurting Catra was the last thing she had wanted to do, and she would never forget the bullet that shot through her heart when she saw the fear in her partner’s eyes this morning. 

That hole would be there for the rest of her life, and she wouldn’t ever forget it.

Before she could even open her mouth to apologize Catra had leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, pulling her closer and running her fingers through her hair and over her back. She’d squeezed her eyes shut, overwhelmed again by the love she got in this moment when Catra couldn’t have been pleased with her. There wasn’t anything she could do now to change how the night and subsequent morning had gone, but that didn’t stop the weight in her stomach or the barbed wire around her heart when she thought about what she could have done differently. The problem now was that there were only two things she could have done to stop the morning from progressing the way that it did; stop binding, or stop sleeping next to Catra; and she didn’t plan on stopping either of those things.

She’s not sure which one at this point would hurt to do more.

Catra held Adora close to her while they silently listened to the other breathe, something the brunette didn’t know was a luxury until this morning when she’d awoken to something akin to a nightmare. Waking up to her partner, the person who had been the love of her life since before she even knew the weight that any of those words held, gasping for breath, wasn’t something that would ever leave her mind. 

While Adora didn’t understand _why_ Catra loved her so much, she knew that this morning had scared her beyond words. She let Catra hold her, and could feel in her girlfriend's rapid heart beat against her ear, that she was just as worked up about the situation as Adora had been. Catra’s fingers ran through her hair, scratching and massaging her scalp gently while she hummed a soothing tune to fill the silence, filling the space where she knew words should be when she just didn’t have the words yet. Her other hand ran up and down her back, pressing into her skin and carefully lightening when she reached where she knew the bruises on her upper back started. Those same whispered praises drifted through the air like breath fogging in winter or wisps of smoke from a blown out candle. They were the same praises she sang to her this morning when she helped her change, when she teased her on the way home from work, and each and every time they made love to each other.

She stopped her movements when they heard the bedroom door across the hall open and Bow’s faint voice on the other side of the door. 

Catra found the words, then.

_”Can I tell Glimmer and Bow? We really need to talk about this and I know they’re worried._

She could only nod, and try not to cry as Catra got out of bed, walked across the hall, and closed the door behind her.

She’s brought back to the present by Bow, who comes up to her and wraps a ‘conveniently sized’ throw blanket, one of the ones he kept around for this exact reason, around her. His touch lingers on her shoulders and she looks up at him, seeing that his eyes are misty and a little red. He’s looking at her with understanding, because he knows how she feels. He knows how it feels to sit in a room and hunch over to hide a part of yourself that doesn’t belong there, a part that kills you inside to look at. Their eyes stay connected and he nods, handing her a pillow to hold in her lap and hug against herself.

Glimmer settles in the armchair with her coffee and folds her legs under herself. Bow makes his way to a chair next to her that he’d pulled from the dining set. They’re still in their pajamas, looking like they hadn’t woken up long ago, and she doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that this is the first conversation any of them are having this morning. Is getting it out of the way first thing better, or is it just going to sour a day they could have enjoyed if she hadn’t ruined it?

Catra comes and sits next to her with her own coffee and wraps an arm around Adora’s slouched shoulders, pulling her into her side.

No one has said anything yet, and she can’t stand that they seem like they’re all stalling.

Catra clears her throat, drawing everyone’s eyes to her.

“There’s something Adora has been going through that we need to talk about.”

Adora’s brows furrow further, and while she thinks it’s nice that Catra seems to be tiptoeing around the issue, it's a little strange to her. Ms. Weaver never passed up an opportunity to tell her exactly what she had done wrong, and it was always a little jarring that other people didn’t treat her that way.

“What’s going on buddy?” Bow asks with an encouraging smile and nod.

Maybe something about the question coming from him makes this a fraction of a percent easier. Or maybe it’s because everyone in this room is either a trans person, or in love with a trans person, and dysphoria wasn’t a stranger around here.

“I um,” She bites her lip, trying to find the words. How much did they know? How much was she going to have to tell them?

“Why don’t I start, and you can jump in when you feel more comfortable?” Catra says next to her.

She nods.

“Adora has been binding unsafely, and this morning she couldn’t breathe when she woke up.” 

It makes Adora wince.

_Ok, we’re just ripping the band aid off_

It’s silent for a beat, just a moment where she really isn’t sure which way this will go.

Bow is the first to speak, “For how long?”

_Jumping in happened faster than I hoped it would._

“A year?” She doesn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but she has never done well under pressure. She’s never done well being the one everyone looked to for answers.

“A year?" He repeats, eyes widening. He's clearly a little shocked that he didn't notice.

"It didn't start out this bad. It kind of... evolved from where it started and before I knew it, it had been a year and things had gotten so much worse."

"Ok, can you tell us why you didn’t say anything?” Bow asks. There isn’t any judgement in his voice, just a calm understanding mixed with worry. It’s infuriating that they’re being so gentle with her over this.

“Because I’m not trans! I just… I just didn’t think I deserved to claim I felt dysphoria. I’m… I’m not sure what I am, but I know I am not trans and every moment I thought about having dysphoria felt like I was taking a word that wasn’t meant for me and taking advantage of it. It feels like I am taking advantage of someone else’s struggles. It feels like taking something away from both of you.”

“Just because you don’t know how to label your identity, because you know you’re not trans, doesn’t mean you don’t feel dysphoria,” Catra says from beside her, squeezing her arm around her shoulder tighter.

“Adora, you aren’t any less valid for not knowing the words for how you feel. You don’t deserve to be in pain, to hurt yourself, just because you don’t know the words for it yet. You aren’t any lesser than me and Catrina just because we know what our identities are. You’re on a journey, and you need to be more gentle with yourself,” He says earnestly. She can tell he means it, and the words make tears trail down her face in the same path they took mere hours before. She feels a thumb run over her face, wiping at her tears, and leans into the palm that cups her cheek with a small whine.

“Adora, have you thought of wearing a binder?” Bow asks.

“Binders are for trans men. I just didn’t feel right using something that-,” She cuts off when she realizes what she’s about to say, what she’s about to repeat.

They were words she’d been repeating to herself for a long time, and she didn’t want anyone in this room to know just how often she told herself that.

“Isn’t meant for you?” Bow finishes the sentence for her before continuing, “Adora, binders are for people who need them, not for any one group of people. If you need a binder you’re already the person they were made for. It doesn’t matter if you don’t identify as trans masculine, or if you don’t even know what to call your identity, or if you don’t want to label your identity at all. If your chest makes you dysphoric enough that you’ve been hurting yourself and damaging your body for a year then you’re exactly the person who needs one.”

“But I’m fine! There are people who need binders more than me. Why would I take one away from them?”

“Taking care of yourself isn’t taking anything away from anyone else. Stop telling yourself you don’t deserve help or to be comfortable or to stop being in pain. Stop talking to yourself in _her_ voice,” Glimmer says in what is possibly the most stearn tone she has ever used with Adora. She always tried to take the friendly joking approach, because she knew that getting into an argument between both of their headstrong personalities wouldn’t lead to anything good. This time though, she’d sat here listening to her friend, someone she was so close to that she considered them her _sibling_ spiral further and further for long enough and knew that being stern was the only way to break through.

Adora looks down, shame and guilt eating away at the remainder of her resolve for this entire fucking conversation. She wants to stop sitting here and hurting all of the people she loves the most. She wishes all of this would just stop, because she doesn’t think any of her friends or her girlfriend deserve to have to deal with someone like her, someone with so many issues. She’d been spending so much time hiding it all to protect them from herself that now that they knew she didn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” She hears the soft whisper next to her and turns to the one person she loved the most, the person whose reaction she was the most afraid of. She turns to look at Catra and pulls her face into a grimace when she sees the single tear track on her face.

“We love you, Adora. I love you. Stop thinking about other people, about taking something away from them or using something that you think is meant for someone else. Repeating your most destructive thoughts over and over again isn’t going to make them true. Using resources that help you isn’t taking it away from anyone else. Just let everything else go and let us worry about you. Let me worry about you,” Catra whispers, pleading with her eyes. There is a fierceness hovering just below the surface and it comforts Adora to see Catra love her so passionately. 

“Ok maybe… maybe I do need a binder,” She gives in.

She looks around at her friends, at Bow and Glimmer and Catra all looking at her like they just want her to let them love her, and she thinks that maybe letting them help isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe letting them know what has been bothering her, what she has been agonizing over for over a year, is what they want.

Bow gets up and goes to The Glimbow Layer (the sign on the door is evolving almost daily) and comes back holding one of his binders. He and Adora had always been similar sizes, and she’s certain that one of his will fit her just fine. He kneels in front of her and reaches out to hand it to her.

“I have an extra. I don’t really wear the white ones anymore since I got all the ones in my skin tone, so you can have this one. But you have to promise me you’ll use it safely. You have to promise me that you won’t put it on today, or until you’ve recovered a little bit. Adora you have to promise not to use it to hurt yourself.”

It’s the same promise she had made him make for her when he got his first binder in the mail and she’d come to him with nothing short of the love and support she thought he deserved. He’s throwing all of those exact words back at her, and she understands that more than anyone, he knows what she’s putting herself through. He knows the danger and he knows the pain well. He’s asking the same thing of her that she asked of him, knowing how important it was.

Adora didn’t break promises.

She nods and reaches out, taking the binder from him. The material is soft, lacking the stiffness it would have if it were new and had just come out of the package. The material is a cool mesh to the touch, but she can feel that while it flexes it also has a rigidity that her sports bras lacked. They were too soft, too flexible and made for supporting breasts rather than holding them down, which was the reason she started wearing sizes too small and eventually wearing more than one. The front side is quite a bit thicker, while the back is almost see through in it’s thin tight weave. She fists the material and then lunges forward to hug Bow, and he holds her tight while she cries.

She feels Catra’s hand on her back and her lips on the back of her neck. She feels Glimmer’s small soft fingers combing through her hair. They hold her while she finally, after all of this time, lets it all out. 

This is the first time in years, maybe ever, that she thinks to herself; _I might actually be ok._

***

Somehow after all of the events that have taken place so far today, it is only around 10 am when Adora and Catra move back to the bedroom, and Catra begins the next phase of her plan. She lays Adora down in bed again and sits next to her, leaning down to kiss along her face and neck. It makes Adora giggle again, that light, carefree sound ringing through the room that has Catra grinning back down at her. She reaches down to tickle at her sides and it makes Adora’s laugh grow breathier while she shifts to get away, though she’s trapped by the blanket. 

She plants a firm, wet kiss to her lips and pulls away to sit back up, “I have a question, and it can be the last thing we talk about like this today. I just need some clarification on some of the… language I have been using to talk to you.”

Adora tilts her head, a little confused by what Catra thinks she could have said that would have been inappropriate, “What is it kitty Cat?”

“You don’t have to say anything about your identity yet, like at all. I swear that isn’t what I am asking about. But I just need to know if I am… misgendering you when I call you ‘baby girl?’”

Adora doesn’t look offended, but she takes a moment to consider the question. “I do want to share this with you. I’m really just… Tired of always hiding. I don’t know how to explain it, but even though I don’t think I am just a girl, I don’t mind it when you call me a girl. Does that make sense? Like, I think there are other words that fit too, but it doesn’t make ‘girl’ less accurate.”

“Do you want me to call you something else in addition to that? Or do you want me to stick with it until you tell me different?”

“Just… stick with it until I ask you otherwise, please?”

Catra’s grin widens and she leans down to kiss her on the cheek and whisper, “So you like it when I call you ‘baby girl’?”

Adora’s breath catches, “Yeah.”

“How about when I call you ‘princess?’” She says, directly into her ear before dragging her tongue along the shell.

“Mmmm, yeah.”

“And you like being my good girl, don’t you?” 

“Yes. Ye-yeah Cat I really love being your good girl,” She replies, something in her voice giving away how deeply she means it.

“Well, I am going to go make us some breakfast, and then I am going to come back here and cuddle with _my_ princess, ok?” She asks.

Adora pulls a face, “Um, I am supposed to work and go to practice later?” 

Catra keeps her face neutral, trying to remain calm and allow Adora the understanding that she needs. She was hoping to lead up to this a little more tactfully, but the sooner they get it out of the way the better. She just hopes that Adora decides to take the day off, once she reads through the emails Catra had typed for her. She figured there was no way after their talk this morning that Adora would be so bold as to decide herself, returning to her default comfort zone of staying busy to avoid thinking about her problems. Hopefully, this push can help her see for herself what she needed, and help her learn to take that step by herself someday.

“There are three emails in your drafts that I typed for you earlier today. I’m not going to tell you what to do when it comes to this stuff, because I know how big of a deal it is, but I need you to read them. I hope you’ll send them, but as much as I wish I could do it for you, you need to be the one to decide to do it. You need to be the one to decide that it’s time. It doesn’t really help you if you don’t believe it, so I don’t want you to send them if you don’t really think it is what you need. I’ll be back with breakfast soon and you can tell me what you decide, and no matter what it is I won’t think less of you. Just… consider it, please,” She says, kissing her forehead and ruffling her hair a little bit before leaving Adora alone to read through and process.

She doesn’t want to disappoint her coach or her teammates by skipping practice. They weren’t mandatory because the season was over so the schedule was much less rigid, but her place on the team paid her tuition. She felt like it wasn’t fair to show a lack of dedication just because she could. When it comes to work, she doesn’t want to disappoint her supervisor as well as lose out on a day’s worth of pay, regardless of the fact that her body probably couldn’t handle going to work today. She was supposed to be better than this. She was supposed to be reliable, to be someone that her superiors could look to and identify that she was actively rising above her peers. 

She definitely doesn’t want to see a therapist, to admit the flaws she’d been trying to overcome. But she knows she has to. She knows she has to change something or things would just keep getting worse and worse, to a point where she wouldn’t ever recover. She knew that she needed help, that she couldn’t keep doing this to herself. There were times when she stayed awake all night because the amount of sheer effort it took her just to breathe made her fear that she wouldn’t wake up, and today was proof that she wasn’t far off of that becoming a reality if she wasn’t careful. While she didn’t think she was particularly worth the effort, she knew that she probably wasn’t the best person to ask when it came to that. She’d been aware throughout her life that maybe the way Ms. Weaver treated her, the way she groomed her to try to make her perfect for no other reason than that she enjoyed the power that came with tearing someone else down, wasn’t something that any child should have to go through. 

Maybe therapy would help her finally figure out why nothing she did was good enough. Maybe it would help her be better; a better friend and a better girlfriend. She certainly could have used the answers all those years ago when she asked over and over again if she was good enough yet for Catra’s parents to let her visit only for the answer to be ‘no.’ 

_”Stop talking to yourself in her voice”_

Was that what she did? Did she talk to herself like Ms. Weaver did? The more she thought about it, the more she took a hard look at the way she was treated and the way she learned to treat herself, the more she realized that she didn’t know which words were her own thoughts and which came from deeper within from a colder more mocking voice. She grew up with her and as much as she tried to separate the things she said that were true from the unnecessary cruelty, the less she thought she was her own person and the more she figured that she was just a tool the woman had shaped for her own will instead of into a person.

She’d spent her life trying to be ‘good enough,’ but good enough for what?

Good enough for Bow and Glimmer? Good enough for Catra? She didn’t believe it, but all three of them seemed to think she already was. 

Good enough to deserve her tuition and housing? She met all of the numbers she ever needed for her scholarships. There wasn’t a doubt in the minds of anyone that met her that she had earned the money she received.

Good enough for herself? She couldn’t even begin to know what kind of treatment she really deserved, let alone how she was supposed to get to a place where she could do it.

Maybe therapy would help her learn how to treat herself. Maybe she needed to go back to the beginning and learn something she was never taught; how to love herself. Because she learned how to love others through her friends that loved her first and stood by her side patiently while she learned what that meant, but she never learned how to love from the one person tasked with teaching her.

She sends all three emails, and turns her phone off before setting it on the bedside table. 

She had known for a while that she needed help.

For the first time, she believed that she deserved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting with chapter 6 all of my chapter titles are Taylor Swift lyrics because I have a Problem (TM) and I am Dramatic (TM)


End file.
